MAND December Board Member Spotlight: Avery Erickson

Briefly tell us about your day-to-day work: I am currently a first-year medical student at Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine in Boise, ID. My day-to-day work includes attending classes and going to various club meetings. My day usually starts at 5:30AM when I begin studying and continues late into the night. My studying is broken up every day with various anatomy, procedural, and skills labs. I try to squeeze in a quick work out class at CycleBar a few times per week and make sure I spend time with my husband, Alex, who is in nurse practitioner school at Boise State!

Tell us about things you do that you find particularly interesting or motivating: I am particularly interested in learning more about diseases I spent years helping to manage as an inpatient dietitian at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. I find building on the intersection of my nutrition knowledge, basic sciences, and clinical sciences incredibly fulfilling and motivating. I am also incredibly motivated by my fellow students’ interest in nutrition and their desire to learn more about nutrition so they can better care for their future patients. I am so happy I get to share my knowledge with them!

What has surprised you about your work?  I am surprised by the various conditions (some I had never heard in my DPD program) that can be effectively managed or even prevented all together by proper nutrition.

What trends are you seeing in your work? I am seeing a trend of increasing medical student interest in nutrition and an emphasis on using nutrition to help manage or prevent disease in all medical and surgical specialties. I am feeling so confident that this future generation of physicians will be incredibly in-tune to the needs of the modern patient.