Q&A with Dr. Friedman

Sophie Baldwin, 6/27/24

What are your day-to-day responsibilities and typical caseload?

• • One day a week at the Hasbro children's clinic

  • Performing checkups for growth, nutrition, and preventative health care (exercise, diet, mental health); treating sick visits; teaching adolescent health (substance abuse, safe sex)

  • Four days a week are dedicated to research: how parasitic diseases (hookworm, malaria) hurt children and pregnant women, how diseases cause malnutrition and anemia, and how to address/treat these diseases

What is most exciting about your job?

• • Global health research is very unique and exciting

  • Seeing the high-risk population at Hasbro; 80% of patients are on Medicaid; able to practice community/social health

  • The clinic helps break social barriers by giving out diapers and food

Why did you decide to pursue medicine?

• • Interested in Pediatrics from a very young age; loves biology and science

  • Grew up in the clinical world; dad was a physician and mom was a clinical psychologist

What is one moment in your career that made you appreciate medicine?

• Worked in Brazil as a medical student and met a boy with horrible asthma; he didn’t have access to the same medicines as in the US; set up a global donation program with the pharmacy to send asthma medication (albuterol, flavin)

• • Another was a girl diagnosed with ALL cancer at five; she did well with treatment and became a soccer player

If you could go back and choose a different specialty, would you? Why or why not?

• • Would not do anything different; pediatrics is the best field because kids are super resilient and malleable; treating kids impacts their for life

  • Pediatrics has a very broad age range; you can take care of premature babies up to teen adolescents

What was the most difficult aspect of your journey to medicine?

• • Working 80 hour weeks in residency at a hospital with high acuity: kids were very sick and dying, which is hard to see

  • Ultimately, residency was very rewarding

How are you able to manage a work-life balance?

• • More flexibility with research; less flexibility in the clinic

  • Research has the same amount of hours but you get to make your own schedule

What is your advice to students interested in pursuing medicine?

• • Explore different ways to do medicine in college (e.g. shadow physicians)

  • It is a long road, not easy, and very expensive

  • Do not go to medical school and then realize it is not for you: you’ll be in debt

  • Be excited about medicine

  • If you’re not sure about medicine, still do pre-med classes in college in case you change your mind