Petrina Duffour is a fourth-year student on the pre-Physician Assistant (PA) track majoring in Biology. She is a proud first-generation student and identifies as Ghanaian American. At Miami, she serves as the President of the Minority Association of Pre-Health Students (MAPS), is a Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) scholar and mentor, and a member of the Dean Student Advisory Board (DSAB) for the College of Arts and Sciences.
How has your identity affected your pre-health journey?
Back at home in Columbus, Ohio, I did not realize the importance of my identity because I was a part of a very diverse school district. I was used to seeing people that looked like me and people who did not look like me. However, when I came to Miami University, which is a predominantly white institution, it was normal to be the only person of color in a lab section and lecture hall. One challenge that I have faced is trying to find my voice in a community of people that do not resemble me. This being said, I have been able to grow because of this discomfort and learn how to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. Even though my identity has posed a challenge in the sense that I have not had as many resources as my peers, I realize that it can be a strength. My identity has enhanced my shadowing experiences with other PAs and even my job as a healthcare assistant at Planned Parenthood. My perspectives have allowed me to relate to other patients that did look like me and did not have advocates for them.
What advice would you give pre-health students that identify as minorities?
One of the first pieces of advice I give to my mentees in LSAMP is to never suffer in silence. A mistake that I made coming into Miami was that I was not confident enough to speak up about what I was lacking in that would help my pre-health journey and future applications. I would encourage students to be more vocal about their challenges, classes they are struggling with, and even financial hardships. If I would have done that, I would have realized that I was not alone and there were other people in the same boat who knew about resources that could help.
Another piece of advice I would give to minority students is to own your identity and to walk proudly and boldly in who you are. My last piece of advice is to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and know that you are going to have to try to break out of your shell. If you are a first generation student like myself, you do not have an extensive network of medical professionals that you can shadow or receive mentorship from. Even though we may be lacking in support, I encourage students that share this situation to be more vocal and practice introducing yourself and having a list of questions already in mind. It is really important to be able to hold conversations with medical professionals and network with them on your own so that you can build that sense of support for yourself.
What are you looking for in PA schools in terms of diversity? How do you plan on bringing diversity to these schools?
As I am building my list of PA schools to apply to, I am looking to see whether their board of directors has anyone that looks like me. I think this is really important in advocating for students who may not have had the same opportunities because of their identity. Besides this, I always look at the demographics of their most recent class of PA students. If I do not see that they have a diverse group of students, it definitely raises some concerns for me and may serve as a second choice. However, if I do find a PA program that has everything that I am looking for except a diversity component, I do not think I would be hesitant to attend. The reason being that my experience at Miami has prepared me to operate in an environment where there is not a lot of diversity. For example, with MAPS we try to provide as many resources as possible to our minority pre-health students to compensate for the lack of diversity at Miami. During my time at a predominantly white PA school, I would make it a goal to help recruit more diverse students or create an organization to implement diversity practices such as learning about implicit biases, offensive stereotypes, and general diversity curriculum.
What are you looking forward to in PA school?
I am looking forward to applying the things that I learn in the classroom to a clinical setting. I have had the opportunity to shadow PAs and watch a couple of surgeries in the operating room, which makes me really excited for clinical rotations. Despite the expected difficulty of PA school, I am also looking forward to furthering my education and bringing more diversity to the face of healthcare.
Ten years into the future, what would success look like for you?
Making the decision to pursue a career as a physician assistant was a tough decision, but I did it because of the goals that I set for myself in the future. I want to give back to my community in Columbus, Ohio, and also to those in Ghana by introducing educational and health resources to these communities. My hope is to establish clinics in Ghana so that healthcare can be more accessible and patients can avoid many of the hurdles they have to overcome when receiving standard care. In Columbus, I would like to serve the Ghanaian community and close the gaps of medical distrust among communities of color. In general, I would like to bring diversity to the face of healthcare by excelling in my academic endeavors and advancing in my degree. I want to help open the door for other minority students by leading by example. In the future, I also hope that I can indulge in the research field by obtaining a PhD because I believe that we can learn how to support others through understanding where underserved communities come from.
