Learner Profile
Francisco Borja
HMX Courses
Immunology, Genetics, Biochemistry, Physiology, Pharmacology
Francisco Borja has completed medical school, but that doesn’t mean he’s done learning. A physician in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Dr. Borja feels strongly about keeping up to date on fundamental topics that will apply to his work, as well as push him forward into the next stage of his career. He’s completed five HMX courses so far.
Want to hear more from Francisco? Listen to his story on the Learning Paths podcast.
What appealed to you about HMX courses?
What I can say is that I absolutely love them, they were one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. The methodology, everything, they were so well-structured.
What did you find to be the most useful parts of the courses?
The real cases. I saw in the physiology course a patient that had respiratory problems, and you saw how the patient was struggling with her disease, I actually felt so desperate and quite sad and nostalgic – sometimes as physicians you work only on theory, not on practice, not the human part. But we’re treating humans, not robots. To see how the patient was struggling with her disease, it really made me feel that I have to really do things well. All the cases, the review questions, it was just an adventure. It was a really nice experience.
What was the challenge level like for you, as someone who’s gone through medical school?
I think my university lacked the depth of the [HMX] genetics course. The genetics course was really heavy. The most difficult courses I have done so far are biochemistry and genetics, because they’re really – I wouldn’t say difficult, I would say really challenging, you must really spend time doing this. A lot of people would say online courses are not as difficult as you think – no, you must really understand the terms and subjects and study the material to actually do something good. In the review questions, if you got something that wasn’t correct and you thought something, you actually could see where it was wrong.
Do you see yourself applying what you’ve learned in the courses to your work in plastic surgery?
In every sense. Surgery is not only cutting the body and stitching it – there’s also biochemistry involved in it, it’s physiological, things are happening before, during, and after the surgery. You must master the basics in order to do something bigger. Many people unfortunately say, “I’m going to be a surgeon, I might not need that,” but it’s not true…I’m planning to use all the knowledge I got from these amazing courses in my career, absolutely.
You’ve expressed an interest in connecting with other HMX students. Why do you think that’s important?
I remember writing a question in the [discussion] forum and asked something about genetics, and a guy from Nepal answered me and thanked me. There’s a great community that is born of students that would love to get involved in this, so we can share ideas and do a lot of things. That’s something quite amazing. You have people from all over the world that are interested in medicine.
I saw getting involved with this program as an opportunity to actually trigger myself into something bigger. And I think there’s a lot of people that may think like this and could use this excitement to do something nice that would benefit all of us.
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