We had a chance to sit down with fourth year MD/MBA student at Emory, Sarah Kuehl, who will graduate in 2022 as a “Triple Eagle” because she completed my undergraduate degree at Emory in 2015! She plans to pursue a combined residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and is interested in leveraging her MBA for health systems research and quality improvement throughout her medical career.
What have been impactful events that have led you to this pre-health track?
I worked in healthcare consulting before starting medical school. I knew I wanted to take a year or two off before starting medical school, it was partially because I was on the fence during undergrad years about whether or not I was pre-med, so just to not have my timeline be too compressed (I needed to take the MCAT and all those fun things). As I was looking for what I could do in that year or two with my biology degree, and I really felt like I had already learned the basics of how research worked. I had worked in a couple of different labs and had a biology major, and with the assumption that I would be getting into medical school and learning much more about clinical medicine, I just wanted to see something completely different. My goal for my gap year was just to see a different side of healthcare. There were all these talks about how complicated the healthcare system is, the rising cost of healthcare, it’s just a pretty common thing you hear about. So I wanted to get into something that would let me learn about the costs of healthcare and the different inefficiencies, and that led me to healthcare consulting. One of the great things about consulting is that they hire from all different backgrounds, so you could be any major as long you have the interview skills. It’s nice to have actual working experience and an appreciation and understanding of this different side of healthcare. The consulting firm I worked for specialized in hospital reimbursement, so I learned the entire process of when a claim is submitted to an insurance company all the way to when the hospital is paid. Although I haven’t really been able to leverage this in medical school, this is partially what led me to pursue an MBA. I’m still really interested in these healthcare inefficiencies, so I’m hoping my combination of a healthcare consulting background with an MBA will eventually open up doors for these types of leadership positions in hospital administration.
What helped guide you to where you are now? What was your journey like?
It was a really difficult decision for me. I knew I wanted to pursue a dual degree, but it was between MPH vs MBA. For me, it came down to what I was interested in. In any dual degree, that’s what really matters. If you want to be involved in public health and make a difference in the healthcare system, you can, and to be honest you don’t even need an extra degree for that.
What do you wish you knew 5 years ago?
I was really considering an MD/MPH program before MD/MBA, so I wish I would’ve known that it’s really about how you want to spend your time and whether you think these degrees are worth it. I was considering getting an Epidemiology concentration at Rollins [School of Public Health] and I am not very math-inclined so that just did not get me as excited. When I was thinking about what would really get me involved in public health, I thought of it more as leadership positions, quality improvement type of work, joining the boards of organizations making these types of decisions. It just seemed more broader picture, so I decided MBA was a better fit for what I wanted to do.
If you could start over, what would you change? Do you doubt or regret pursuing a dual degree?
I definitely don’t regret doing an MBA, but I do have doubts because it is less traditional to combine an MD with an MBA this early on in the game. Because I’m still very interested in clinical medicine and plan to apply to a combined medicine and pediatrics residency program. So I think for me, I won’t know what doors it opens until they appear, because I’m still in the process of pursuing my MBA. With that being said, just having those extra three letters next to my name is kind of a stamp showing that I have unique interests. Hopefully, I’ll get pulled into different projects that align with my interests, because that is kind of what solidified my decision to get a dual degree. I loved clinical medicine, but it wasn’t always completely aligned with what I was interested in researching and devoting my time to.
What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
At Emory, there’s a guaranteed financial aid that you get when you’re accepted as an MD, but for MBA it’s more person-by-person, so there’s no guaranteed aid. It can be frustrating because when you’re applying, you don’t know how much it’s going to cost. But everyone I’ve talked to who’s also doing MD/MBA has received pretty significant scholarships, anywhere from 50% to full scholarships, because they really value bringing MD’s into the program. So it is frustrating, but I just had to take the leap of faith and find out how many scholarships I got after being accepted. It’s also a little difficult to figure out when to do this because some residencies will really value the second degree and take it into consideration, but alternately, some residency programs might also pay for you to get it. The possibilities are essentially limitless; there are some people who attend evening classes during their careers while they’re practicing to get an MBA and sort of pivot their careers. A lot of my professors mentioned it’s an emerging trend for students to get their MD/MBA earlier like I am; it’s traditionally later. However, I’ve had a couple rewarding moments that remind me of the importance of my dual degree in addition to its uniqueness. There were a couple instances where I was able to connect people interested in healthcare issues with medical students interested in the same, and that was a small example of what I’m hoping to do in my career- be that permanent bridge. For example, Emory has an organization called CLSM (Community Learning Social Medicine) and they were working for a nonprofit organization working on healthcare within a community that wanted medical students to come up with a budget. The students had no idea how to do that, so I connected the medical students with business students whose whole training was in coming up with budgets. So this kind of validated my education and reminded me why I’m pursuing this dual degree.
What is the best advice you could give someone pursuing the same track as you?
I was humbled by how much there is to learn. I thought if I got an MBA, I would understand business, but it’s more of an introduction to the language than mastery of it. For the most part, a lot of MBA students come from more corporate roles, so it was humbling for me to know that I won’t know most things. It’s important to just go with the flow and see what doors it will open. Also- you don’t need to learn and retain every bit of information in medical school. It’s like a fire hydrant of information, so you won’t catch all of it, but just lean in and embrace it. Overall, I would say don’t second-guess yourself. It’s overwhelming that there are so many different options, but just pick what seems to make the most sense to you at that time, and trust that it will work out.