CHRISTIAN ARBELAEZ, M.D.

OVERCOMING EARLY LANGUAGE CHALLENGES

Dr. Christian Arbelaez didn’t allow language barriers as a youth stop him from becoming a successful doctor as an adult.

When Christian Arbelaez was just 10 years old, he and his family came to the United States from Colombia with no English skills – and little more than the clothes on their backs. In addition to the bleak economic picture facing the family, U.S. schools posed their own special challenges for Arbelaez.

“For my elementary school homework assignments, I would just copy the questions because I didn’t understand what I was writing,” Arbelaez said. “Early in high school, my assistant principal told me flat out that I wouldn’t amount to anything. Some encouragement!”

The principal was wrong. Dr. Arbelaez, 32, now teaches emergency medicine at the Harvard Medical School and is an attending physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. His experiences growing up as a minority and an immigrant led Arbelaez to become a respected national advocate for minority access to medical care.

“I bring a different perspective to medicine than most of my colleagues who are white,” he said, “and it is a needed perspective.”

Preparing for the MCAT

His biggest challenge in becoming a doctor was learning English well enough to not only pass college courses, but do well on the MCAT and U.S. Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).

“I always felt like I was playing catch-up because of the language,” he said. “I was most worried about the MCAT, but I did all my preparation work for it and basically studied my butt off.”

But not hard enough, according to his prehealth advisor, who told Arbelaez his MCAT score was too low for medical school admission.

“I felt like I had done well, but I didn’t get the same reaction from her,” Arbelaez said.

Applying to Medical School

Arbelaez forged ahead and applied to five medical schools in Texas. The prehealth advisor even supplied a letter of recommendation, despite her doubts. Arbelaez received just one letter of acceptance, which came from the University of Texas, Galveston.

Looking back, Arbelaez concedes the advisor may have been correct to view his scores as borderline, but wishes she had been more encouraging.

The lesson, he says, is to forge ahead if you have a realistic hope of success.

“Looking back, she may have been right that my score wasn’t the best, but what if I had taken the MCAT again and scored lower. My confidence would have been destroyed,” Arbelaez said.

During medical school, Arbelaez married his wife Diane and had the first of his three children, Christian Alexander, now 8.

Balancing Work and Life

Arbelaez says that balancing his work load with a family was more difficult when he was in medical school and on frequent surgery rotations during residency. “Now as a faculty member, I work and I come home for dinner, which is great because I love my family very much.”

But now that he teaches at Harvard, he enjoys more free time. “I learned there is light at the end of the tunnel.”