May 18, 2026 By Hannah Fairbanks Liam St. Hilaire, a 4th year UCSF medical student who will soon begin as a Critical Care Scholar in the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, has been involved with the Students Capturing the OR Experience (SCORE) Program for several years. He began as a volunteer and now serves as the Director of Alumni and Director of SCORE Together, a longitudinal mentoring program that aids students in applying to summer programs to stay in the pathway toward becoming medical professionals. We caught up with Liam to learn more about his background, his involvement in the SCORE program, and what the future holds. Liam was born and raised in the border town of Las Cruces, New Mexico, by immigrant parents from the small Caribbean country of Dominica. When Liam was 16 years old, he participated in the Las Cruces Public Schools Excel Program, a publicly funded educational program that allowed participants to work in the community for high school credit. Liam was placed in a thoracic surgeon’s office, where he gained his first exposure to medicine and surgery. “I would shadow the surgeon while he was seeing patients, and eventually he trusted me to be a kind of a quasi-MA: I’d be intaking patients, taking people's blood pressure, learning the basics. And eventually, he allowed me to accompany him in the operating room. I didn’t even know what scrubbing in meant at that time.” The time in the OR was eye-opening. “I got to experience something as a 16-year-old that many people don’t get to experience until their third year of medical school during their surgical rotation.” The experience propelled him to attend medical school, and he selected UCSF because of its academic rigor, commitment to diversity, and the funding they offered – which would essentially allow him to graduate debt free. As a first-year medical student, he attended a few lectures by Dr. Charlene M. Blake and approached her, asking to shadow her and learn more about anesthesia. That evolved into a mentor-mentee relationship, and Dr. Blake introduced Liam to the SCORE program. Recognizing the program as similar to the one he had experienced in high school, Liam jumped right in. “The first year, I was teaching with organ specimens that are graciously donated by the pathology department, asking these high schoolers ‘have you ever held an actual human heart?’ And of course, the kids love it every time. The following year, I got invited to share about my background and the impact of medicine on my life as a keynote speaker.” Liam expressed his intention to support others by sharing his experiences: “If I struggled with things, you shouldn’t have to. If I went through it, I think it’s my obligation to figure out how to pay that back. I’m grateful for all the department and the SCORE program has done for me, and I want to continue to support folks that would likely never have an experience like this. I hope to continue to stay involved as a resident, because it’s one way I keep my cup full.” Looking ahead, Liam is focused on finishing his final weeks of medical school and celebrating graduation with family and friends who are coming to San Francisco. And then it’s on to being an anesthesia resident at UCSF. Liam also matched into the Critical Care Scholars Program, which integrates critical care into the anesthesia residency. At the end of five years, he will dual board in both Anesthesia and Critical Care. “I will be extremely busy. This is the time to hone my craft. I know that the first couple of months are going to be brutal and a huge transition for me. But I also want to give myself grace.”
