Open Chart interviews practicing healthcare professionals so middle and high schoolers can explore medicine beyond "doctor or nurse."
From clinical pharmacist to perfusionist — explore 15+ profiles written in plain language for students of any age.
Real conversations with people who actually do this work — the honest stuff they don't put in job descriptions.
Open Chart was built by pre-med high schoolers who had the same questions you do. We go straight to the source — interviewing real professionals across fields most students have never heard of — and write it up so anyone can understand it.
Tap any card to read the full profile and interview.
Real conversations with people who actually do this work.
Why we built this, and who's behind it.
We were pre-med high schoolers who kept running into the same problem: every resource about healthcare careers was either too surface-level, too technical, or written for adults who already knew what they were doing. Nobody was writing for students who were still figuring it out.
So we built Open Chart — a free resource where students can read honest, plain-language profiles of real medical careers, backed by interviews with the people who actually do them.
Open Chart is completely free and designed to be shared. If you're an educator, school counselor, or organization working with students interested in healthcare — we'd love to collaborate.
A conversation with Dr. Grace Prince-Torain · Podiatrist & Educator, Anne Arundel County
"When I could get a wound closed, I knew I could keep a patient walking — and that means I could increase the longevity of their life."
Dr. Grace Prince-Torain
Dr. Prince-Torain originally considered becoming a pediatrician — she loves working with kids. But when it came time to commit to a medical path, she already had a child and needed a career with manageable hours. Podiatry offered that balance. Over time though, she found that running a practice with children was still demanding, which eventually led her to merge her love of medicine and kids in a different way — by becoming an educator.
Her path wasn't linear. She spent five years in undergrad after transferring schools following the death of her mother. Then two years of graduate school studying microbiology, before getting accepted into podiatry school. Because she had a son by that point, she enrolled in a special program that allowed her to complete podiatry school in five years instead of four. After graduating, she completed a three-year residency — one year of primary care followed by two years of surgical training. Then she started her own practice.
A lot of her work was preventative care for diabetic patients — people with neuropathy or poor blood flow to their feet. She also did sports medicine work with orthotics, surgical procedures like bunionectomies and hammer toe corrections, wound debridement, and regular visits to nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and patients' homes. She'd block certain days for office visits and other days for facility rounds, with separate time set aside just for documentation. "Notes are very important," she says, "because that's how you get paid, and that's also how you fight any possible malpractice."
Business. Running a practice means dealing with rent, utilities, phone bills, internet, property insurance, malpractice insurance, hospital dues, and professional license fees — on top of actually seeing patients. "You definitely underestimate the amount of business knowledge you need," she says. Knowing how to bill correctly and maximize reimbursement from insurance companies is essential, and nobody really teaches you that in medical school.
When patients die. Not from anything you did — but when you're treating people with serious comorbidities, sometimes they don't make it. That emotional weight is real, and it's not something that comes up much in training.
That podiatrists just "like feet." Her response: "If something is diseased, it's going to be unpleasant — and if it's healthy, it'll be less unpleasant. It's no different from any other part of the body." Podiatry is a full medical and surgical specialty, not a niche preference.
She's not worried about AI replacing podiatrists. "Luckily, AI can't cut toenails." But she does think AI will make the job easier — faster note-writing, more efficient billing. The demand for podiatrists isn't going anywhere. As long as people have two feet, the field will be needed.
Insurance companies consistently underpay physicians — often only covering about half of what's billed. Advocating for fair reimbursement is a constant battle, and it's something every practicing podiatrist has to deal with.
Shadow a podiatrist. Check if your local VA has a podiatric department you can observe. Volunteer at nursing homes to get comfortable with elderly patients — they make up a big part of a podiatrist's caseload. Get solid in the core sciences. And consider taking a Latin class — a huge amount of anatomy, physiology, and microbiology terminology is rooted in Latin or Greek, and knowing it makes everything easier.
Empathetic. Humble. Self-motivated. Someone who genuinely loves to keep learning — new techniques, new treatments, new materials, new data. "You have to be a lifelong learner in whatever field, but especially in podiatry."
Be disciplined and organized. Dr. Prince-Torain says she struggled her freshman year of college because she hadn't developed those skills yet. Once she learned how to manage her time, study effectively, and prepare for exams — her grades improved dramatically. "Just learning how to study and being focused" made all the difference.
Dr. Grace Prince-Torain
Podiatrist & Educator · Anne Arundel County Public Schools
A conversation with Dr. Daniel Kudaya · MD, MPH — Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
“I am very much more interested in increasing someone’s chances of spending two more hours, two days, two months, three years, 20 years with their loved ones.”
Dr. Daniel Kudaya
Dr. Kudaya grew up in Ghana, where the path into medicine looked very different from the US system. After finishing high school and scoring exceptionally well on his national exams — he was particularly strong in physics and had considered engineering — a conversation with his family changed his direction. His brother, an engineer who had struggled to find work, encouraged him to look at medicine instead. So he did. He applied directly to medical school out of high school, earned a government scholarship on the strength of his grades, and completed a six-year MBChB program at the University of Ghana.
From early on, Dr. Kudaya was drawn to surgery because of how hands-on it was. But it wasn't until his clinical rotations in medical school that it became certain. When he stepped into the surgical setting, something clicked that hadn't clicked anywhere else. He felt excited to be there, connected to the patients, and able to understand their challenges in a way that felt natural. Every other rotation felt like work. Surgery felt like his thing.
After graduating, Dr. Kudaya practiced in Ghana for about two years — first as a house officer at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, one of the largest hospitals in West Africa, then as a surgical intern and senior house officer at St. Dominic's Hospital. He assisted in surgeries ranging from hernia repairs to laparotomies, managed critically ill patients, and conducted research on conditions like head injuries and upper GI bleeding. He then came to Johns Hopkins to pursue a Master of Public Health, where he now works in clinical research and teaches at Baltimore City Community College — all while preparing to enter surgical residency.
Dr. Kudaya's current role is in clinical trials at Hopkins. He's usually up by 7 a.m., spending the early morning reading through his own research projects before heading into work around 9. Once there, the day varies — on patient visit days, he's seeing participants, collecting labs, processing samples, and getting consent forms signed. On quieter days, it's mostly data entry, resolving queries flagged by the system, and making sure everything is documented accurately. By 4 p.m. most of the heavy work is done; the last hour is cleanup. Evenings often go back to his personal research. "It really depends on what's on the desk that day," he says — some days are full-tilt busy, others are genuinely calm.
The technical skills — informed consent, data accuracy, patient follow-up — those are all taught. What nobody prepares you for is the soft stuff: how to keep your teammates genuinely informed, how to stay calm when a patient visit falls apart last-minute, how to cover for a colleague without resentment and trust that they'll cover for you. And then there's kindness — not just to patients, but to colleagues. Everyone has deficiencies. The question is whether the team can absorb them together. "These are things that are not taught didactically," he says, "but they are essential for survival in the real world."
The patients you can't help. Not because of anything you did wrong, but because the science simply hasn't caught up to their condition. Dr. Kudaya describes a patient presenting with late-stage lung cancer that has spread throughout the body — and there's no treatment left to offer. You have to look them in the eyes and say you've reached the limit of what medicine can do. "I find those moments very disheartening," he says. "Because we are human, and these things can happen to anybody." It doesn't get easier. It just reminds you of how fragile everything is.
Two things come up. First, the idea that certain doctors shouldn't work in certain specialties because of their gender — Dr. Kudaya mentions the assumption that male doctors don't belong in OB-GYN. His view: training reshapes how you see the work entirely. You become focused on the problem in front of you, not the circumstances around it. Second, the money misconception — the idea that doctors are either in it purely for wealth or somehow above caring about it. His answer is more honest than most: he's not motivated by salary, he's motivated by adding time to people's lives. But he also has bills, loans, and a mortgage. Both things are true at once.
Many, he says. But one stands out. Back in Ghana, a young man came in after a severe traffic accident — his leg was nearly destroyed. The team worked to save it, but ultimately it had to be amputated. Months later, Dr. Kudaya crossed paths with the patient's brother at the hospital and asked how he was doing. The brother lit up. His sibling was doing fantastically. The smile on the brother's face, the excitement in his voice — that was enough. "These things make you feel that yes, this is worth it any day, any time."
AI is coming — Dr. Kudaya is clear about that. But his view is that the goal isn't replacement, it's a hybrid. Human judgment combined with AI efficiency, new drugs improving patient outcomes, robots assisting in procedures. He doesn't think AI takes over medicine in the next 10 to 20 years. He thinks it becomes a tool, and the doctors who learn to use it well will be the most effective ones. The field is already changing fast — and that's mostly a good thing.
Be focused in the sciences — take AP or college-level biology and physiology if you can. But don't make school your entire identity. Dr. Kudaya is emphatic about being well-rounded: play a sport, learn an instrument, do something outside of academics that makes you a fuller person. Then when you're ready to shadow, just email attendings directly. Identify surgeons or physicians whose work interests you and reach out. Most are willing to say yes. "And stuff like this," he adds, gesturing at the interview itself — "work that changes lives. This is not school work, but this matters."
Hardworking, obviously. But the trait Dr. Kudaya keeps coming back to is selflessness. Surgery comes with long nights, demands that go beyond your job description, and moments where you have to give something of yourself that nobody will pay you for. You have to be the kind of person who can do that genuinely — not because you have to, but because you want to. "Everybody will see it easily that you're selfless," he says. "And that will make you very successful."
If Dr. Kudaya could change one thing about his own path, it would be carving out more time for family and friends. Medicine has a way of swallowing your whole life if you let it — there's always more to learn, always more to do. His advice: build in even 15 or 20 minutes a day that belongs to the people you love. "Everything becomes about medicine so easily," he says. "You have to be intentional about not letting that happen."
Dr. Daniel Kudaya
MD, MPH · Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health