Meet Bill: Exercise science (pre-med)

Being from Kalamazoo, you don't get another experience like Western. It's a very interesting and unique community. I transferred here to get back closer to this community, and as such, I enjoy the amenities living on campus and close to my family and to my friends. Because Western is home for me.

One of the main takeaways I had outside of the curriculum with exercise science was the connections I made with my peers and the faculty. The friends I made and the things I learned from people that are very knowledgeable in their field and people that want to support you has a had a lot of impact on me.

So as an exercise science pre-med student, I was able to experience health care beyond the borders of the United States and use my minor in Spanish to travel to Costa Rica for nine days and experience health care abroad and apply what I've learned here in the U.S. and weighed against the practices in other countries.

I am a student intern who helps monitor phase three cardiac rehab patients at Bronson Battle Creek. These are people who are post-major cardiac event or post-invasive heart procedure where we kind of monitor their exercise and get them back to not only a baseline of good heart health, but to also make improvements in all areas of their health through diet, exercise, stress management and mindfulness. We help people not only recover from their surgery, but to hopefully have a better life experience moving forward from that. 

The other part of my internship is stress testing, where we will have people who under physician orders come down to have a stress test. We put them on a treadmill and then using my understanding of exercise science principles guide them through what's called, a graded exercise test. We look for any changes in their heart rhythm and then any abnormalities. The results of the test are then integrated into the diagnostic procedure for what happens next for that patient. 

Prior, I had about six months of work experience before my internship with Bronson. I was a cardiac technician. I used that experience with rhythm interpretation and EKG readings along with my background in exercise science fundamentals, to actually get myself into an internship at Bronson Battle Creek.