SHANGHAI – Corey Georgesen is not your ordinary Nebraskan.
The fourth-year UNMC medical student became fascinated with China when he was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln from 2006-2010.
He took two years of Chinese classes at UNL, and then in 2008 he studied in Xi’an, China, for three months as a student in the College of Business Administration exchange program.
As he neared the finish line of his medical school education, Georgesen thought it would be nice to make one more visit to the world’s most populous country.
He worked out a three-week rotation in dermatology at the Shanghai Hospital for Skin Diseases. The rotation was funded by the UNMC Department of Family Medicine as part of UNMC’s student exchange program with Tongji University in Shanghai.
For Georgesen, who aspires to become a dermatologist, the rotation has given him life experiences that he never would have received in the United States.
Like the name implies, the Shanghai Hospital for Skin Diseases deals only with patients with dermatological issues. It’s a gold mine for a wannabe dermatologist.
Georgesen said the hospital has:
- A ward with 40 patients with leprosy — most are cured, but they are so debilitated from the disease that they will never leave the hospital.
- Another ward devoted entirely to syphilis patients. Many of these patients failed to seek treatment in the first year they contracted the disease, and it has resulted in neuro-syphilis, a condition that causes serious mental problems.
An Omaha native, Georgesen graduated from Creighton Prep High School in 2006. He is the son of Dan and Deb Georgesen and will be the first ever member of his family to become a physician.
He can’t wait to begin his dermatology career.
“There’s a lot of variation and excitement that comes with being a dermatologist,” Georgesen said. “You get to work with people of all different ages. I really like that you can see the patient in clinic, do the biopsy, then the surgery, and you can even do the pathology. It’s a unique field of medicine.”
He has applied to a number of different programs for his four-year residency training, which will include one year in internal medicine and three years in dermatology.
There’s no telling where Georgesen will wind up, but he’ll always be grateful to UNMC for his China experience.