Learner Profile
Sofía Hincapié Arias

School

Catholic University of Santiago de Guayaquil, Ecuador

HMX Courses

Immunology, Genetics

After growing up with parents who were both physicians, Sofía Hincapié Arias initially resisted following the same path. But experiences observing in pediatric clinics during high school confirmed that medicine was her passion, too. Sofía took HMX courses before her final year of medical school in Ecuador to continue learning and prepare to enter the field.

At medical school, I saw clinical immunology but not the basics of immunology. So when I was learning about immunological diseases, I also had to learn the basic concepts to understand diseases, so it was very difficult for me. If I would have taken this course before, it would have been so much easier for me to learn.

Four months ago I had a genetics course, and like immunology it would have been better if I had taken the course before.

In my medical school it’s everything only with books, and we have to memorize, so it would have been better if I could study with some graphics and interactive videos [as in HMX courses].

In the case of immunology, I really liked the clinical linkages; it was really interesting to learn about the different types of diseases and therapies. This clinical linkage was also a reminder that there will always be different types of drugs and we have to update the knowledge we have now.

In the case of genetics, I really liked the key concepts, where they explained all these concepts that are difficult to understand in books. For example in the unit on cancer as a genetic disease, they explained all these hypotheses that are difficult to understand in books, but they did it so interactively with these videos.

I’m really interested in applying for the physiology and biochemistry courses in December, and I also recommended it to two friends and we are planning to apply for these courses. I was so enthusiastic about immunology and genetics, and I’m sure I’m going to learn with the other courses, too.

These courses exceeded all expectations – I really loved the way the courses explained the basic concepts so accurately and then applied these concepts into the clinic with real patients. In my experience with medical school, sometimes I was like, how can I treat patients? When I was seeing these videos, I could watch these doctors in an examination of a patient and think, oh, this is how I could do it better, I could apply this practice into my medical rotation.

In the [preview course] – in the case of genetics, I was really interested in knowing, for example, why Amy had intolerance of lactose in adulthood and not when she was younger. These examples from real life really attracted me. Even though I’m in the last year of medical school, I learned every week. So I was really satisfied with the course.