UH Manoa
IN THE NEWS
Student Life
The sounds of 84 high school students shuffling out of the doors at the John A. Burns School of Medicine’s (JABSOM) Medical Education Building echoed through the halls as the cotton candy skies stretched above the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) Kakaʻako Campus. It was the end of the day of the weeklong Annual Medical Diagnosis and Treatment (MDT) Summer Program. One of the medical students who had volunteered for the program smiled as she reminisced about her experiences as a participant in the program, just before her senior year of high school.
Watch our video, below:
“So, I actually attended the MDT Program way back, 10 years ago, back in 2015,” said Zoey Simmons, currently a first-year medical student.
The program was recommended to Simmons by her former human physiology teacher at Mililani High School.
“Prior to coming to MDT, I had done a lot in terms of exploring my love for math and science, taking a lot of those types of courses and things like that. But I hadn’t really, truly got to experience a lot of the more clinical things that you get to be exposed to here (MDT Program). I mean, it’s like a mini medical school. So it was definitely a very affirming experience. Especially, for me, the patient encounters,” Simmons said.
Through simulated patient encounters, students learn to perform basic clinical skills such as taking vital signs and listening to the heart and lungs with a stethoscope, as well as speaking with and counseling patients.
“For me, that was the chance to see if I could do the real, human interaction portion that is medicine. ‘Cause I knew I liked math, I knew I liked science, but you don’t ever quite get to have a chance to practice pretending to be a doctor and having actual feedback from actual physicians,” Simmons said. “And I just remember that during that time, I had my encounter and got to wear the white coat for the very first time and that was thrilling for everyone!”
After all the patient encounters were recorded, her video was selected as one of the examples discussed and shown to all program participants.
“I just vividly remember that moment as like, you know, maybe, maybe I could do this. Like if I can get that part then, I think.. I think I can do this (become a doctor),” Simmons said.
Additionally, the MDT Program offers high schoolers learning opportunities, including small-group problem-based learning, gross anatomy laboratory demonstrations, clinical skills laboratories, computerized manikin simulations and simulated patient encounters.
After graduating from Mililani High School, Simmons followed her love of science to UH Mānoa and received her B.S. in Molecular Cell Biology. During her college years, she returned to the JABSOM campus as a participant of its IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) Undergraduate Research Symposium in 2019. In Fall 2024, she entered the doors to JABSOM as a medical student.
This year, she became a co-chair of the Neighbor Island Medical Scholars Program (NIMSP), which brings high schoolers from the neighbor islands to participate in the MDT Program. This year, 10 NIMSP students were sponsored by Kaiser Permanente.
“Once I found out that it (NIMSP) was trying to help get students from the outer islands to this MDT Program, I thought that was wonderful. ‘Cause, truly– I wish that everyone that has an interest in medicine in high school could attend this program. And that, to me, was just such a special thing to do, so I really wanted to be involved in that,” Simmons said.
That’s how Simmons made her way back to the MDT Program, 10 years later.
“I remember getting the tour around campus. I remember sitting down with my first PBL tutor. Crazy enough, they are my professors now. So it’s still a bit of a ‘pinch me’ moment sometimes that I remember when I had Dr. Horio and Dr. Fong and Dr. Omori talking to me as a high school student,” said Simmons.
She remembers presenting her learning topic to Dr. Horio and having him give her feedback. So it felt very special for her to be on the opposite side, having topics presented to her and giving her feedback to the students.
“It's full circle. It's surreal. It's very like, I still can't believe I'm on this side of the table,” Simmons said.
She has enjoyed seeing the students' faces light up and witnessing their eagerness to soak in all the knowledge in front of them. But wanting to come back to the program as a volunteer and hoping to make a difference in these students' lives is a testament to how profound the MDT Program was for her and continues to be influential for youth interested in healthcare careers.
“One of the reasons why I want to go into medicine in the first place is to be able to leave long-lasting positive impacts on people's lives,” said Simmons. Adding, “I feel like there are so many different things that brought me to be able to sit in this chair today– MDT definitely being one of them and whatnot. But I just believe that you should try and go back and pay it forward or pay it back.”
Click below to view our entire gallery of the MDT 2025 Program on Flickr.
