Meet 2025 MD graduate Kevin Chen
Hometown: Fort Dodge, Iowa
Undergrad: University of Iowa
Matched: Internal medicine, UnityPoint–Iowa Methodist Medical Center
What drew you to a career in medicine?
No one in my family was in health care. I came to college not knowing what I wanted to do, but I really liked chemistry and biology in high school.
My sophomore year, one of the upperclassmen recommended me to a job working for the Iowa Donor Network. If someone passes away and they're an organ donor, my job was to retrieve their corneas for transplant or research purposes. I got a letter in the mail from one of the recipients of the cornea which I helped retrieve saying how grateful they were. So, I started looking into health care.
I did a little bit of research in undergrad on pre-eclampsia with Donna and Mark Santillan [PhD and MD, PhD, respectively] and then volunteered at the hospital. Six years later, here I am now.
Tell me about some of your mentors in medical school.
Donna Santillan played a big role in my wanting to see where our limitations are in medicine and do my part to advance medicine on that front.
I did my core year on the Des Moines campus. Dr. Ken Cheyne, the assistant dean there, gave me a lot of advice. None of my family are in medicine, so I didn't know about how residency works, how to get your license, or how to get through medical school. He had information that was very important in helping me.
Outside of coursework, what was important to you in your time here?
The Santillans run a maternal fetal tissue bank where they have a lot of samples collected from moms and babies. My research was a quality control project on how closely related the samples they have are to the general population of Iowa. If you want to run a research experiment, it's good to know how closely related the samples’ age, ethnicity, and race, for example, are to the general population.
I volunteered with the University of Iowa Mobile Clinic, and I think that was a really good opportunity to see more patients. I got to get that continuity between people that come to the university for care and people that can’t always afford to come here and try to help in those cases.
Other than that, I was also involved in other student organizations. I was on the Student Liaison committee, which works at the end of each course to put together all the students’ responses to improve the course. In Des Moines, I was a part of the Wellness Committee that came up with different events for everyone in the cohort.
What was it like being part of the Des Moines cohort?
In Des Moines, it's a different learning opportunity because they let the med students do a lot more. Compared to the University of Iowa, where the team has an attending, a fellow, a resident, and then the med students, in Des Moines, it's usually just the attending and the med students. At that point in my training, doing a lot more was the best for me because I learn best with hands-on experiences.
You don't get to see as many of the really rare, special cases as you will at the University of Iowa. But again, at that point of my training, I think it was very important for me to see the bread-and-butter of whatever specialty I was in.
Why did you choose your specialty?
I knew I liked procedures, but not surgical procedures. I like using my head, thinking about the problems, so that has led me towards internal medicine. I have learned all these things in medical school, and I really wanted to choose a specialty that still allows me to practice all those different aspects of medicine.
In some other specialties, you may only get a small glimpse of a patient's life. A big part of internal medicine that I liked was that you get to follow the patient long term and develop a better relationship. The patient can trust you more, and then you can provide, in the long run, the best care to the patient.
What fond memories of medical school come to mind?
People here at Carver really made my time in medical school great. Everyone is there trying to help each other out. We're all in it together, and we all help each other to try to understand different topics. There's more of a camaraderie, which is how medicine should be.
The cohort divides into the four learning communities. Within the four learning communities, you get to be subdivided into small groups. You do so many things together that it's like a built-in social network that allows us to have a framework to build upon in making friends.
What are you most excited for in residency?
I rotated in Des Moines. The people there are really nice. It's a great facility with great learning opportunities.
I’m keeping it pretty open right now about fellowships. I'm still in the phase of exploring.
I’m excited to start practicing what I've been learning about in the past four years. It's a little scary that you need to start making decisions with this less hand-holding in residency, but it's something that I'm excited for. Just starting to take care of people that are sick.
What advice would you give to a first-year medical student?
Don't be afraid to ask for opportunities. Especially if you're someone like me that learns best by doing, don’t be afraid to speak up and let people know that you're eager to get involved. That's how I got involved in my research project was just by asking if there were any projects for me to do.
The more I did that, the more I figured out that most people are very eager to teach if you show that you're willing to learn. I think that the quality of the learning you get significantly improves if you're willing to find different opportunities for yourself and show that you're eager to learn.