“You all have more power than you know.” That was the message Anna Yap, MD, delivered to a room full of medical students during an education session at the 2024 AMA Annual Meeting.
Dr. Yap, an emergency physician at University of California, Davis Health, drew from her days as a medical student leader to offer practical tips on medical student leadership and advocacy. Here are some of the key takeaways for medical students.
First, excel in your training
Leadership and advocacy are wonderful pursuits for a medical student. But Dr. Yap highlighted that those opportunities will always be there for you. If your commitments are drawing focus away from your training, there’s nothing wrong with stepping back.
“A mistake I’ve seen is that folks will sometimes think that organized medicine can be a replacement for being a good doctor,” she said. “At the end of the day, you have to be a good doctor and a good worker first so your colleagues will respect your policy work.”
“Organized medicine will always be here for you,” said Dr. Yap, now an assistant professor of emergency medicine and health policy fellowship director at UC Davis. “Once you complete your schooling and get through residency, you can always come back.”
For medical students looking to hone their leadership skills, the AMA offers the chance to distinguish yourself through more than 1,000 leadership opportunities and skill building through online training modules, project-based learning and more.
Show up and be reliable
In looking at how she grew as a leader through organized medicine, Dr. Yap spoke of coming to an AMA meeting on a whim early in medical school. She got involved through the AMA Medical Student Section (AMA-MSS)—culminating in her election as speaker of the section in 2017—but her involvement wasn’t without a few roadblocks.
“I lost every election I ran for in the MSS until I ran for speaker in a five-way race and won that one,” Dr. Yap said. “But along the way, every time I’d lose an election there would be something else that popped up that nobody else wanted to do, so I’d try it. I showed up. I was reliable. I did the work. That’s how I played it forward.”
Channel life experiences
Medical students do not come to the table with the same clinical expertise as an attending physician, but they still have plenty of skills. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Dr. Yap and colleagues from the AMA wanted to work on a vaccine advocacy campaign.
“We wanted to do some stuff about COVID vaccine misinformation,” Dr. Yap said. “My other job before medicine was in marketing, and I was able to use those skills to work on vaccine campaign. I was able to work with so many organizations such as the WNBA, the UA, and even got to create billboards with the Los Angeles Football club because I had that background.”
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Find allies and experts
Grassroots organizing is another path to take as a medical student leader, but there are also existing avenues to make an impact.
“I have always felt so intimidated by people who start their own nonprofit,” Dr. Yap said. “I don’t know if I could ever do that. I have found that there are people who are doing the work 24/7, so they can take care of that day-to-day work—but I’m able to lend my physician voice to find ways we can help each other out.
“You want to find allies and experts to maximize your impact,” she said. “Find the organizations that matter to you and find ways to make your mark through them.”
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Connect with peers and get hands-on experience advocating for change through trainings, meetings and events in Washington, D.C.—and online.
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