For many individuals, a major attraction of the medical field is its dualistic nature – the combination of hard-core science with the more humanistic side of helping people. For these people, the decision to pursue a medical career is more than a mere aspiration …it’s a calling to make the world a better place.

A few years ago, it became the overwhelming desire of two current fourth-year medical students at KU School of Medicine to change not only their careers, but also the world around them. Both Kate Jennings and Beth Lawson Loney had unique journeys to medical school, but neither of these women let their unusual backgrounds get in the way of their burgeoning desire to play a role in solving the medical and social problems they would soon encounter.

Jennings early on felt her calling was to study religion, with an emphasis on Buddhism. She traveled to Sri Lanka and India for research, but her life soon took a surprising turn.

After college, she began working in North Carolina for a nonprofit agency that helped small entrepreneurs develop their own successful companies. But Jennings, although she enjoyed the job, grew restless. She had always had a yearning to work with others to help people during a time of crisis. Because of that desire, Jennings found herself drawn to medical school.

Her new journey started at KU Medical Center five years ago, and she immediately saw major differences between her undergraduate studies and her classes here.

“I had to make some big adjustments in my way of thinking when I started studying to become a doctor,” she said. “In Buddhism, there is no such thing as a clear-cut answer, but the first two years of medical school is just memorization of hard facts.”

Although her academic world now revolved around medicine, Jennings still wanted to fulfill her passion for liberal arts while at KU Medical Center. Fortunately, she said, she has had the opportunity to participate in several projects that fed that passion.

After her second year of medical school, she did a year-long fellowship in pathology and later worked at Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico. It was while she was working at the ranch that four Boy Scouts were struck by lightning while hiking. She climbed the mountain to help rescue the kids, who all recovered. She knew then that her decision to become a doctor was the right one. “The connection that I felt with those kids was so intense,” she said. “It was an emotional, life-changing event for me.”

Jennings, who said it was a great feeling when the boys came back to the camp to visit her, would like to practice someday at a free clinic when she completes her education and possibly volunteer for medical missions overseas.

Lawson Loney’s journey into medical school was a bit different than Jennings. She already had her degree in nursing from KU, and she knew she wanted to continue her education. She thought maybe she would become a nurse practitioner or teach nursing some day, but when she started working in hospitals, she knew the system had to change. She saw a problem in the way some doctors treated their patients as a list of symptoms. Lawson Loney wanted to be an advocate for the human side of medicine, and she felt she could do that more successfully as a doctor.

Now that she is in medical school, Lawson Loney isn’t just going to classes. She is also actively involved in forming policy for health care in the United States by serving as the student representative on the board of directors for the American Academy of Family Physicians and previously as co-president of KU’s Family Medicine Interest Group.

“The health care infrastructure is broken,” Lawson Loney said. “If we are going to fix it, it has to be government-mandated. The insurance companies aren’t going to fix it, and the consumers are pretty much powerless. We’ve got to get people motivated to do something now. Without it, change is never going to happen.”

Lawson Loney has also been active in educating young people about HIV and AIDS. She spent five weeks in Namibia working at peer education conferences and doing community education. She has also been a part of the Dramatic AIDS Education Project, which teams medical students with actors and teaches students in the Kansas City area about the disease.

“I’m one of the fortunate ones,” she said. “We have so much, and we need to give back a lot.” +