Spotlight on Samantha Steeman

Samantha “Sam” Steeman is a second year Medical Student at Stanford. During the summer between first and second years she spent six weeks in Ethiopia doing research through Stanford’s Medical Scholars Program. Sam had great field experience and published her first first-author paper) in October 2024 with the support of Global Engagement at Stanford Surgery.

“I went to undergraduate school at the University of Pennsylvania where I majored in neuroscience and minored in Chinese language and chemistry. During my undergraduate training, I was involved in a couple of different research projects, and my interest was mostly on autism phenotyping, genetics, and gene discovery. I spent at a lot of my time at the autism research lab.

I also worked as an EMT in undergraduate which had triggered my passion for medicine and motivated me to apply to medical school. Now, I’m a second-year medical student at Stanford.

During my work in undergrad, I didn’t really know much about global surgery, but there was a little bit of a global health component. We ran an international autism research study in which we collected phenotyping data and genetic samples from people in various countries across the world and I was one of the people in charge of conducting the research with them and one of the assignments was interviewing the families. From doing that, I became interested in global health.

How did you learn about the MedScholars Program?

In my first year as a medical student at Stanford, I started taking various elective classes. I really liked anatomy which we took in the first quarter, but I also started to take surgery elective courses like introduction to surgery in which speakers came and talked to us about different surgical careers and specialties. I truly enjoyed these sessions, and I started thinking that maybe I should consider going to surgery after graduating from medical school.

I started hearing about the concept of global surgery in my first year when I took an anesthesia and global surgery elective course which I really loved. I found it very informative and exciting in terms of everything that I could do in global surgery and it made me think that maybe I want to do a project in global surgery to learn more about it.

Early on in the first year of medical school, they told us about the Medical Scholars Program; it’s actually a requirement, but the question was: did I want to do it abroad?

I always wanted to travel and do research abroad. So, I started reaching out to people to figure out my MedScholars options and learn more about the opportunities available. By fall, I made up my mind and decided that I wanted to travel MedScholars.

How did you identify a mentor in global health?

I had known about Dr. Tom Weiser from reading books that he’s been featured in, and I was passionate about the work that he did at Stanford, so I reached out to him to express my interest in doing a project with him. A couple months later we got on a call and he said that there’s a fellow who he also mentors whom I can work with in Ethiopia (Maia Nofal),  he connected me with Maia to talk more seriously about potentially making a joint proposal.

At that time, I was taking a class (Introduction to Surgical Research) where we worked in the class on drafting our proposals, and that really helped me writing my proposal which was later reviewed by Maia and Dr. Weiser. The thing that took a bit longer time was writing my IRB and make sure it was approved before my visit to Ethiopia.

Tell us about your experience in Ethiopia.

I was in Ethiopia starting late June to early August, so it was like 6 weeks. I used to start my day by reading a book in the café or running in the Gym where I stayed or in the park with my coworkers. From there I would go to the Lifebox team office to review the project and set up my appointments. As the week progresses, I would spend most of the time at the hospitals doing interviews with surgeons or nurses and observing some surgeries too.

My study was qualitative interview based and focused on post-operative prophylactic antibiotics use across different types of surgery. I studied surgeons’ motivation for prescribing antibiotics, challenges associated with doing that, concerns about antibiotic resistance in patients, infection prevention control, and talking with nurses about their experiences in this domain.

It was basically about gathering as many answers as possible to urgent questions: Is there an overuse of antibiotics post-operatively in low-income countries? If so, what are the barriers to reducing that? What do clinicians on the ground think about this issue? I tried to learn what their priorities are for making this practice better.

I was able to quickly adapt to the local system and became more familiar about the culture and common traditions in that lovely country. All the surgeons I met were comfortable speaking in English, but I had Amharic interpreters when I spoke with the nurses. There were restrictions in speaking directly with patients and their families, but I asked the medical staff about the perspectives of patients and their families, which is also a crucial matter.

There’s no doubt that it was an incredible learning experience for me, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped me accomplish the study. I’m truly impressed with what the surgeons and the medical staff are able to achieve with the limited resources that they have. I believe it gave me a different perspective and will be an impactful motivation for me further in my career, in the future.

Tell us about the process of publishing your paper: Was it your first paper? How did you feel about it? Was the process harder or easier than you expected?

My paper was published late in October this year. It’s not my first paper as I had published five or six other papers before this one, but this was the first first-author paper that I have published, and it’s a big milestone for me, indeed.

It was definitely difficult, the data collection is pretty time intensive in a qualitative study, other than learning how to do the analysis process, then writing the original paper and getting feedback on it, followed by revising the analysis and the theme of the paper. It definitely took several months, and it was a big process, but I feel lucky that I had the support from the amazing team, especially Maia Nofal who is really incredible to work with, with her help I gradually became efficient in getting the paper together.

We submitted the paper in the summer then waited to hear back revisions. We got the revisions late in August and early September and they were extensive, but once we got them in, the paper was accepted pretty soon after that.

Tell us about your experience working with the Lifebox team in Ethiopia?

Working with Lifebox and learning from them, whether in their office or the connections that they helped me make with surgeons and nurses in hospitals, was incredible. Dr. Tihitena Negussie, a pediatric surgeon, was my site mentor, and she was extremely helpful and supportive in welcoming me into the space, helping me work with Maia and also introducing me to surgeons who I could interview, as well as introducing me to administrative people who helped me when I go to the hospital. It was really great, and I felt very welcomed.

Overall, it was a phenomenal experience; before coming to medical school, I never imagined that I would be working with an important non-profit team who are doing global work and running research on the ground, in real time.

Where are you now with your training, and what do you think you want to do in residency?

I’m seriously thinking about surgery, and I’ve done other research out of this project in different kinds of surgery. I will start my clinical rotations in the spring, and that will help me gain more clarity about pursuing surgery and further global surgery work.