North Star junior attends second medical conference

Aubrey Welch, a junior at North Star High School, is doing almost back-to-back medical conferences, one on the West Coast and another on the East Coast.

Welch left Thursday to attend the National Student Leadership Conference on Medicine and Healthcare at University of California Berkeley, which runs through next Friday.

"I am extremely excited about this opportunity," Welch said.

She attended another conference at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 23-16.

At the Berkely conference, she will have the opportunity to participate in leadership development workshops where she will develop skills that include effective communication, public speaking and conflict resolution.

Participants also attend lectures, workshops and clinical rounds, learn medical examination and surgical techniques, and participate in diagnosis and treatment. She will also attend briefings and participate in forum discussions led by national and world leaders in her chosen field, pediatric surgery.

"I'm looking forward to actually being hands-on and actually getting to learning some of the (surgical) knots that I'll get to do because that will be helpful forever, if I want to be a surgeon," Welch said.

Welch received these opportunities by first applying for the College Board when she took her ACTs, which sends the scores to a variety of different colleges and programs.

She scored a 32 on her ACT.

Since she applied for the College Board she was offered multiple programs and chose one at Harvard University through a Congress of Future Medical Leaders Board.

"The reason I picked Congress is because it seemed like it had the most information and helping you really decide what career you wanted and it was all about medicine," Welch said.

During her time at Harvard, she got to view surgery and had the opportunity to submit questions for the surgeon to answer in real time during the procedure. She learned about state-of-the-art diagnostic tools and educated researchers, futurists and technologists.

"It was perfect for me," Welch said. "You got to meet with a bunch of top surgeons in America and medical schools' deans. I thought, 'This is going to be great, I am going to make connections and it'll help me with my future.'"

Since she has attended the board sessions she is considered an alumnus, so now she is able to nominate other students tot go,

Welch said she has always liked helping people. About the time she was in seventh grade she began started experiencing medical issues. She has had a partial ankle reconstruction and heart operations done in Seattle.

"Being around that doctor atmosphere and seeing how they interact with kids and stuff, I was, like, 'I definitely want to be able to do that,'" Welch said. "I really want to be a pediatric surgeon."

She sees being a pediatric surgeon as a way to combine her love for medicine and helping people and children, which is what drew her into this career path.

Her dream school is either Duke University or UC Berkeley.

After graduating from high school next year, she plans to apply to most of the Ivy League schools, and has the opportunity to go to Vietnam to practice medicine through the FutureDocs Abroad program, which she signed up for and was selected for through the Congress Board.

Welch will be selling her D.I.Y. projects at Saturday Market in Havre and throughout the year to raise money for her trip to Vietnam.