Jenny Bress Receives Endowed Scholarship

Jenny Bress, M14, can't put her finger on precisely why, but she has always known she wanted to be a doctor. Maybe it was her desire to help others, or her affinity for science. Or maybe it was just the idea of working one-on-one with folks from the community every day.

What kind of doctor Bress would become didn't become clear until two years into her studies at Tufts University School of Medicine. Choosing a specialty can be an intense process, but Bress wasn't choosing a specialty - she was accepting a truth.

That truth: Bress remembers that it was her mother that called in the news. "Dad had an accident." A spinal cord injury. Bress immediately flew home to be with her family. Though shaken, she was fresh from a neurosurgery rotation and keen to see what was happening on the medical side.

But the administrative side proved deeply frustrating - and eye-opening. There was no sense of urgency, she recalls. "The staff was ignoring him. We couldn't get ahold of any doctors to find out what as going on." Fortunately, her father eventually made a full recovery. And when she returned to Tufts School of Medicine, Bress brought with her the firsthand experience of looking for help on behalf of a loved one, and has since applied it to her studies and her plans for the future.

"One of the reasons I went into medicine is that human connection," she says. "As a doctor, I want to have both the answers and also the will to help."

While "every new rotation brings a new love," on her career choice, one thing is now clear: "Don't lose sight of the whole being." Whether she ends up in primary care, pediatrics, or internal medicine - a few of those new loves - Bress wants to be a part of people's lives, "a meaningful figure" to families in need. As one of four daughters, the importance of family is ingrained; as a Tufts School of Medicine student, community care is similarly ingrained - part of the everyday.

For those who have supported her experience, she can't thank them enough. "It's very motivating to know that people like the Wohlgemuth family are supporting future physicians," says Bress. "They have given us this opportunity and made it feasible for us to begin this journey."