BHS graduate is one of 15 in Weill Cornell Medical College’s first graduating class

By Debbie Raney
Burns Times-Herald

“When I grow up, I want to be a doctor,” a common statement made by children. As most kids grow up, their plans and dreams for their future change many times, but not so for Sharon King.

When King was growing up in Burns, she said she was always interested in serving others, and every time she turned around, things in her life were pointing her to medicine. She followed where her life’s arrows were pointing her, and on May 9, King took the Hippocratic Oath, and formally became an M.D. She is now Dr. Sharon King.

While becoming a medical doctor is in itself an accomplishment, King’s story goes a step further.

In 2004, 15 medical students made history by becoming the first class to enter Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar (WCMC-Q). King was among those 15.

King said that when she graduated from Burns High School in 2000, her plans did not include attending medical school in a foreign country, let alone in the Middle East. While attending Eastern University in Pennsylvania, an organic chemistry professor suggested she consider Qatar. King said she felt it would be a great opportunity; one that would enhance her competency as a doctor. “You can learn so much by studying in another culture. It adds more understanding.”

So King applied and was accepted to WCMC-Q. Her class consisted of students from eight different countries. She would be studying medicine approximately 7,000 miles away from the United States. Making the transition from living in the U.S. to living in Qatar, wasn’t a big cultural shock to King, she said, thanks to previous stays in Costa Rica and Mexico. The biggest disparity between the countries she had visited previously and the country she was about to call her home for the next four years was the abundance of wealth in Qatar.

The WCMC-Q campus itself is state-of-the-art, with a 335,000 square-foot academic building and more than 38,000 square-feet of lab space. Lectures from Cornell’s Manhattan and Ithaca, N.Y., campuses are video-streamed to the facilities and more than 10,000 research resources are available electronically.

The most difficult challenge King said she faced while living in Qatar was the language barrier. Even after spending a year learning Arabic, she said that there are so many different languages and dialects, that she couldn’t communicate verbally with the majority of the patients she dealt with at the college.

She learned to communicate by reading her patients’ body language; and at times, King said finding someone to translate, such as cleaning ladies, was necessary to talk with patients. To some this may have seemed an inconvenience, to King it was a lesson in humanity. She said it will help her throughout her career to understand and be compassionate to all of her patients.

In October 2007, King and her classmates went through a white-coat ceremony, marking their move into the final stage of medical school. Upon receiving her coat, King said she was excited, but did have a moment of anxiety. “You think for a minute, ‘I’m not ready to fill these shoes.’” King soon found that she was not only ready to put on the shoes, they were a perfect fit. In May, the day before graduation, the Senior Honors Convocation was held, and as the Gulf Times, dated Thursday, May 8, said, “American student Sharon King was the star, bagging eight awards.”

She won pre-clinical scholastic awards for academic excellence in the human structure and function course, the brain and mind course and the basis of disease course. In the clinical scholastic awards, she won for excellence in pediatrics, primary care and public health. To top it off, King was the recipient of the good physician award and the humanism in medicine award.

Of all of these, King said the humanism award meant the most, as the selection was voted on by faculty members and students, and presented to the student who has demonstrated the highest standard of compassion and sensitivity in their interaction with patients.

King and her classmates became very close through their time of study at WCMC-Q. She said she built especially strong bonds with her roommate Rana Biary, who is from New York, and friend Jehan Al Rayahi who is from Qatar. She believes they will remain friends for life; they share a strong connection as members of the WCMC-Q’s first graduating class.

Following a second graduation ceremony at the Cornell campus in New York, King now begins a three-year residency in Cheyenne, Wyo., with her pediatrics’ residency to be done in Denver, Colo. Her career of choice is rural family medicine. In an interview with the Cornell Chronicle Magazine, King said, “Family medicine covers all the topics, and I haven’t found a field that I don’t like. You have such great continuity of care. You build relationships with people.”

Where would King like to practice? “I would be very open to working in Burns. I always wanted to see the world, now, I can’t wait to get back. And I am slowly coming back.”

When she does make it back, she has one request. “I am Dr. Sharon, not Dr. King.”