Madeline Egan
University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine
Madeline Egan (she/her) is the course curriculum co-coordinator for Heart-IM. She is currently a fourth-year osteopathic medical student at UNECOM. She received her B.A. from Carleton College in Religion with a focus on death and dying from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. While in college she lived in a Buddhist monastery in Bodh, Gaya India, meditating several hours per day and attending silent retreats on the weekends. She also completed field work in Dharamsala, India interviewing Tibetan physicians about how they perceive the impact of the cultivation of their own compassionate mental state on their patients. Between college and medical school, Madeline took courses at the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota including Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Functional Nutrition, Acupressure, Tibetan Medicine, Nature Healing, and Reiki Healing. She continues to rely on these skills to cultivate her well-being and advocate for the well-being of her colleagues and patients.
At UNECOM, Madeline collaborated with other students interested in holistic healing to restart the Integrative Medicine club and served as the president, recruiting speakers to expand her and her classmates knowledge of healing modalities and how to apply these to balance our own mind, bodies, and spirits so that we can be present for our patients. She also was the co-founder of the first Death Awareness week on campus that is now held annually, educating students about multi-disciplinary approaches to death and dying and encouraging emerging physicians to confront their own mortality through reflection, advanced care directive and funeral planning, death art, ritual, and death cafe discussions so that they will be prepared to have open, honest end-of-life discussions with patients and their families.
Connecting with nature is an important part of what brings Madeline meaning and throughout medical school she has taken 3 day 2 night backpacking trips after every big test to unplug, recharge and reconnect. While studying for Comlex-1, Madeline taught herself how to play the baritone ukulele while simultaneously hula-hooping and singing. During breaks on test day at both Comlex-1 and 2, Madeline went outside and grabbed her hula-hoop and ukulele and played barefoot in the grass. She believes that sharing silliness and laughter in the midst of structure and stress is critical for a healthy, happy life and hopes to bring this to Heart-IM.
Madeline has a passion for Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine and has served as an OMT TA and has completed a 40 hour training course in osteopathy of the cranial field. Madeline is honored to continue her training as an Osteopathic Family Medicine resident, listening to patients with her hands and an open-heart. She is excited to help create a Heart-IM curriculum that challenges fourth-year medical students to think critically about their role as soon to be physicians and how we can look inward to channel the heart of why we went into medicine and how we can continue to cultivate the healer’s art and advocate for our patients in today’s modern medical system.
Dawn Liang
University of California- Irvine