By Dave Paone
Campus News
Healthcare in America is a hot-button issue and it’s been brought to the forefront recently with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by what appears to be a disgruntled patient.
Raiyan Spiteri is a senior at Stony Brook University on Long Island with a major in biochemistry and plans on becoming a trauma surgeon.
Even though she hasn’t started medical school yet, she already has a few problems with the country’s healthcare system. Like it or not, the healthcare system is a business that’s dependent on repeat customers.
“My whole issue is that I don’t agree with the business model,” Raiyan said. “I don’t want to indulge in that type of practice. My intention and my incentive for helping people is to simply help them and not just put a Band-Aid over the problem. I like to get to the root issue and the root cause of things so you don’t have to keep coming back to me. I want to see you once and never again.”
Raiyan said her sociology textbook actually replaced the word “patient” with “client.” She feels this is “propaganda” that says, “In a sense it’s better to put a Band-Aid on the [problem]” because that will result in repeat customers.
Essentially, she’s advocating for a healthcare model that places preventative care at its center.
Raiyan attended Farmingdale State College for two years. For a year during that time, she worked full-time at a doctor’s office managing “manipulation under anesthesia” procedures while taking classes at night.
“I would work from nine to five and then directly after I was taking night classes from six to 10 pm at Farmingdale,” said the 21-year-old.
Raiyan’s interest in medicine began at a young age when she accompanied her mother on a run while riding her tricycle alongside.
Her mother was running the track around a high school football field when a teenage lacrosse player thought it would be funny to fling his lacrosse ball at the fence behind her to give her a startle.
The ball missed the fence and hit her in the eye and she ruptured her orbital globe. She’s had 19 repair surgeries since.
“She still can’t see out of her eye,” said Raiyan.
For the rest of her childhood Raiyan saw her mother’s pain and the need to see doctors regularly.
“I just always felt like I wanted to do more to help and I didn’t really understand how to and it definitely made me more empathetic,” she said. “It just kind of sparked that need in me to want to do more.”
Raiyan accompanied her mother to her doctors’ appointments, so she was constantly around medical professionals and other patients.
She admired how educated the doctors were and looked up to them as role models.
It was in sixth grade when she took her first biology class which really interested her that science became a definite college and career option.
Ask any MD if he had a favorite doctor television series in his youth and the answer will most always be yes. Which one was Raiyan’s?
“I want to say Grey’s Anatomy but it’s cliché,” she said with a laugh. “Of course there’s the drama part of the scenes that make it interesting to watch, but I was actually more interested when it got into the OR parts.”
When the characters mentioned a disease or an infection by name, she’d look them up while still watching the episode.
An applicant for medical school need not have a degree in science or anything medical-related; a degree in any subject will do, which came as a big surprise to Campus News.
“You can be an English major, a math major, communications – anything,” said Raiyan. “As long as you take the required courses needed to be tested on the medical exam and then get into medical school.”
Raiyan’s current class load includes the courses she needs to be ready for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), which is an eight-hour exam.
While Raiyan is not looking for repeat customers, she knows healthcare is a business and is learning the “back office” (the business part) as well as the “front office” (the medicine part).
“I’m learning about the insurance, I’m learning about the medical records, I’m learning about the HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act], I’m learning about all the paperwork-type information and I think that’s very valuable. Any place loves to have a doctor that knows how to work the back and the front,” she said.
As a trauma surgeon, Raiyan could be on-call for a hospital (or several hospitals) because that’s where trauma victims are taken, but then have her own practice for post-surgery and long-term care.
However, Doctors Without Borders and Mercy Ships may be other options, which don’t deal with insurance and copays, making them attractive to Raiyan.
Additionally, those two organizations administer to underprivileged areas, which is also attractive to her.
When she tells people she wants to be a trauma surgeon, often the first reaction is, “Ah, you’re gonna make a lot of money!” which irks her.
“Why is that your first thought?” Raiyan said. “It’s beneficial to know the paperwork aspects and the business model of the medical industry but it’s only beneficial if you use it for the right reasons.”
It appears Raiyan knows what they are.
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