Renata Bastos, M.D., (right) goes over an X-ray with Mexican medical students Victoria Imaz Olguin and José Miguel Urencio, who are the first students selected for the surgery department’s new Latin American Student Program.
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Two medical students from Mexico City are participating in the Health Science Center department of surgery’s new Latin American Student Program, an international visiting student program.

José Miguel Urencio and Victoria Imaz Olguin, both 24-year-old students from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico Medical School, are the first two students to enter the program. They will be at the Health Science Center from January through June for an externship that includes six medical rotations.

“This is a very good opportunity for people from our university to learn about other systems and other cultures,” said Urencio, who would like to become a liver transplant surgeon. “It is different here because there are protocols that say what to do and what to expect with different procedures,” he added. “In Mexico,” Olguin added, “you have to figure out a lot of it on your own.”

While the program is limited right now to students from Mexico, Central America and various South American countries, the Department of Surgery is exploring the possibility of making the program available to students from other continents, as well. The students choose six rotations from 11 offerings which include general surgery, surgical oncology, vascular surgery, plastic surgery, transplant surgery and pediatric surgery, among others. The students are engaged in full-time training, study and research provided by local or nationally renowned physicians.

The externs are supervised by senior surgical team members and are required to attend weekly grand rounds and seminars, as well as daily conferences to discuss the pathologies of patients under treatment. They improve their medical English, including terminology for medical instruments and procedures, and have the opportunity to use advanced technologies available here.

Renata B. Bastos, M.D., clinical assistant professor in the division of cardiothoracic surgery, is director of the program. Originally from Brazil, Dr. Bastos, who speaks Spanish, French and German, in addition to her native Portuguese, is personally familiar with the transition from a Latin American country to the United States. “The language issues can be a little frustrating at times,” she said, because of the differences in the way Spanish and English are constructed, which get even more confusing when you throw in American acronyms.”

Dr. Bastos added, “In Mexico, as in Brazil, there is no college, so these students go directly into a six-year medical school program when they are 17 and 18 years old. The last one to two years of medical school are an internship, which in the United States is done after medical school. At the end of their internship they will be licensed to practice general medicine. They have good hands-on training in Mexico, but they are impressed with the direct learning from attendings and residents in each rotation,” she said.

Latin American Student Program is the brainchild of surgery department Chairman Stephen M. Cohn, M.D., F.A.C.S., who brought the concept to the Health Science Center from his previous experience with the Harrington program at the University of Miami (Fla.), where externships in internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery and other specialties are offered to many students from other countries.

“The Harrington program has more top student applicants than they can handle,” said Dr. Cohn, who also is the Witten B. Russ Professor. He hopes that over time the program can be expanded to other departments and that one day scholarships will be available so that a wider spectrum of students can participate. Students now must fund their own living expenses and participation in the program.

“The students benefit because when they are through they will have evaluation letters from physicians who supervised their rotations. If they do well, the letters can help them when they look for residencies in their home country or the United States,” Dr. Cohn said. “We also hope that eventually we be able to offer a residency position here for one or two of the top students.”

The application deadline for the July-December externship has passed, but students can apply for the January through June 2008 externship by contacting Project Coordinator Catherine Hornsby, M.B.A., at hornsbyc@uthscsa.edu by Sept. 30. For more information about the program, visit surgery.uthscsa.edu/slavsp.asp.