Flagstaff's first Native med student to give back

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) – Statistically speaking, there are few aspiring professionals like Rowin Begay.

Most patients across the nation's tribal lands visit doctors who don't speak their language or come from their area. Of all groups in the United States, Native Americans are the least likely to become physicians, and only about half a percent of all osteopaths are native.

Begay is Flagstaff's first Native American medical school student, recruited by locals to someday practice family and sports medicine in his home region near Rough Rock, between Chinle and Kayenta.

He is one of two locals expecting to learn and practice medicine in northern Arizona.

Begay, 31, is attending A.T. Still University for osteopathic medicine at North Country HealthCare, as the second wave of such students in Flagstaff.

He was pointed to medicine by a search for a good job and a school counselor who encouraged him to work in a hospice and volunteer at a hospital.

His family's experiences in health care have not been so good.

One uncle who needed treatment but wanted to leave the hospital, because the staff couldn't understand what he was saying.

And an aunt died of lung cancer.

Through family translators and misunderstanding, she was told she might recover, when actually the odds were not good.

“A lot of the time we were the ones that had to explain to her what was going on, even though we didn't know what was going on,” Begay said “... I think that was more hurtful than anything – false hope.”

He proposes to tell patients the truth if they're dying, even though that goes against Dineh norms and is not considered acceptable.

Begay hopes to work in the Chinle area after years of rotations and a residency that will require he move elsewhere for a few years.

“Now it's more about realizing there's a need and patients are more comfortable with someone they can identify with,” Begay said of medicine near his home.

Like fellow student Melissa Blessing, who has been a local for the last 10 years, Begay estimates he spends about 80 hours per week studying, on top of being a father of two.

Next summer comes an 8-hour exam that typically requires a month of preparation.

Each could accrue about $260,000 in loans related to med school, and Begay is going into one of the fields that does not pay as well as most medical specialists make.

Blessing, 33, is originally from Minneapolis and was formerly a volunteer CPR instructor and a resident near the border of Navajo and Hopi lands, where she worked in advocacy and lived for years in a home with no electricity or running water.

She worked in the Tuba City emergency room and did undergraduate course work, including in anthropology, at Northern Arizona University.

In one case in her experience, an elderly and blind man was moved from his home to the city, which he was told would be better. He couldn't tend sheep anymore.

The man moved, later fell, broke his hip, and died some weeks later, Blessing said.

The lesson for her repeatedly was that a health care worker has to know a lot about the culture of the person they're helping to help them make the better decisions for them.

Blessing was selected by locals to go to ATSU for the certainty that if she went into medicine, she would likely practice here, where her partner and his children live.

One day, she told a friend that if she could do anything, she'd go to med school.

He told her to go for it.

Blessing wants to be an emergency room physician, likely to practice in Flagstaff, and said studying here was a big reason she chose the program.

She'll end up with big loans, and she'll have to leave home for a few years to do a residency.

“It's a huge amount of debt,” she said, “but I'm doing what I want to do.”

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Information from: Arizona Daily Sun, http://www.azdailysun.com/