Sep 29
6:22 am
After a week of trying different techniques to make our protocol work, I finally collected some usable data today. For my project, I'm using a doppler probe to monitor blood flow in the radial artery; this is a technique that has been successfully applied to mouse models with the equipment I am using, but the technique has been untested in humans, so my mentor and I were becoming skeptical when we weren't getting analyzable results. However, with some trial and error, as well as some irritated skin from having to push the probe pretty deep into my arm…
Sep 28
8:11 am
This is Elisha Fredman's second entry. Read her first MSTAR Diary to learn how she began her MSTAR experience. Viewing some of my tissue samples under fluorescent light, it looks like there may be a detectable difference between my experimental and control groups, which is rewarding to see. It is especially exciting because, as this is a bench research project and not a clinical study, just treating the samples and then preparing them to be viewed has taken a number of weeks. After all of that work, it feels good to have a positive outcome. At the same time,…
Sep 27
6:15 am
Today was a busy day for the MSTAR students at Mt. Sinai. In addition to time dedicated to our research projects, the nine of us come together weekly for a research seminar and didactic sessions as well as to practice our clinical skills in Mt. Sinai’s Geriatric Outpatient clinic, the Martha Stewart Center for Living. Having only recently learned history taking and physical exam skills, I am excited about the opportunity to keep practicing over the summer. First we heard from Dr. Helen Fernandez, a geriatrician who also runs the Geriatrics Fellowship program at Mt. Sinai, about how…
Sep 23
6:10 am
This is Sean Wo's second entry. Read his first MSTAR Diary to learn how he began his MSTAR experience. This Tuesday was a particularly long one because of the weekly noontime meeting. Every week, I meet with a group of other students doing summer research in geriatrics or gerontology. This gives us an opportunity to present our work and receive feedback on our project designs as well as presentation skills that’ll be useful at a poster conference. Each of these sessions is hosted by Drs. Stephanie Studenski and CF Reynolds III, esteemed geriatricians at Pitt Med. Before…
Sep 22
5:46 am
So far, my experience with the MSTAR program has been fantastic. I am doing research at the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute (BAI) in Phoenix, AZ. My project is working with the Arizona Alzheimer’s Registry, a database designed to appropriately match people with research projects currently conducted at sites in the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium. At this point, I am still extracting data from the registry for statistical analysis and every step of the process has been a learning experience. As a newcomer to scholarly inquiry and manuscript writing, I have a lot to learn and luckily…
Sep 21
6:29 am
This is Sydney Harvey's second entry. Read her first MSTAR Diary to learn how she began her MSTAR experience. I can’t believe it’s been 4 weeks since the summer began, and I am midway through the MSTAR experience. I’ve learned so much in four weeks, yet I’m left with a sense of amazement in how much more there is to know. The mentoring I’ve received has been fantastic. In the lab, I have been given increasing amounts of responsibility. In the first week, my mentor was a little uneasy about…
Sep 20
6:40 am
After two weeks already in the MSTAR program, I feel like I have been granted a deeply personal and exciting look at clinical research and endocrinology/geriatrics. I am currently working with Dr. Jill Crandall, an endocrinologist, in a study about resveratrol, which is a natural substance found in red grapes and wine and believed to increase longevity. The purpose of the study is to see if resveratrol would lower blood sugar levels in pre-diabetics aged 50 to 80 and therefore prevent diabetes. As simple as the hypothesis may seem, there are so many facets to the clinical research study itself to…
Sep 19
6:20 am
This is Victoria Yeh's second entry. Read her first MSTAR Diary to learn how she began her MSTAR experience. During the past few weeks, I’ve been looking through many patient exercise diary entries to record the illnesses and injuries they experienced during the time that they were monitored. Throughout this process, I’ve learned a lot about the challenges of data collection in clinical research. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that the wording of survey questions is very important – for example, if you ask patients whether an injury interfered…
Sep 16
8:31 am
This is Linda Scheider's second entry. Read her first MSTAR diary to learn how she began her MSTAR experience. This is about the midpoint of my time here working for the Geriatrics department under MSTAR. I have truly enjoyed my experience so far. As of the beginning of this week, I finished going through my list of 500 charts for the chart review. This was somewhat dull work but I got faster and faster at it. Some of the patients are very interesting and the more charts I read, the more familiar with Geriatric medicine I became. Now I know…
Sep 15
11:28 am
When I first went to shadow a geriatrician this summer, it wasn’t the clinical aspects of my experience that were the most memorable. I did witness an excellent clinician balancing a myriad of concerns for the patients that made up his afternoon appointments. I saw his kindness and openness, and how important it was to the patients to tell me how wonderful he was, and about the health problems he had helped them with or seen them through. But the most memorable part was witnessing a situation in which the research aspect of my MSTAR program could help…
Sep 13
6:11 am
Twenty-first birthday, wedding day, the birth of one’s first-born child, these are moments we all hope we will never forget. Unfortunately and sadly, some do. I arrived in Baltimore for the MSTAR program not knowing exactly what to expect. I had previously been exposed to geriatrics, though only in a small way. I came with most of my clinical experience in pediatrics and family practice, but still very open to expanding my interests to geriatrics and care of the older population. My first clinical experience was today, working with a doctor in the memory clinic. The day&rsquo…
Sep 12
6:01 am
My primary focus this summer is the relationship between hand osteoarthritis (OA) and certain serum and urine biomarkers that might prove useful in predicting, diagnosing, and monitoring OA. As an MSTAR scholar, I am currently working with Dr. Joanne M. Jordan and Dr. Amanda E. Nelson of the Thurston Arthritis Research Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The current gold standard in determining the state of an individual’s joints is radiographs, which are sometimes not particularly sensitive and can only detect joint damage after it has occurred. Biomarkers would be a welcome addition to a…
Sep 09
5:32 am
As an MSTAR scholar working at Detroit Medical Center, I have had the opportunity to shadow geriatric fellows and attending physicians during their morning rounds this summer. This first-hand exposure to geriatric medicine has provided me with a much better understanding of the difficulties facing elderly patients, as well as the multidisciplinary approach that is needed to effectively address them. The following three examples highlight some of these complex issues, including functional status, delirium and dementia, and elder abuse. While rounding in the Acute Care for Elders (ACE) unit at Detroit Receiving Hospital, I saw an elderly patient that was…
Sep 06
6:59 am
This is Suvi Neukem's second entry. Read her first MSTAR Diary to learn about how she began her summer experience. With mere seconds left on the red-flashing-hand, I arrived to the other side of La Jolla Village Drive. From the safety of the curb I turned around and saw the rest of my group in mid-cross walk. Not equipped with the gait speed of an active 26 year old, the elder adults I was with struggled to make it across the six-lane road in the 30 seconds that the signal allowed. Exacerbating the observation was the fact that this was a…
Sep 02
7:08 am
This is Lisa McLean's second entry. Read her first MSTAR Diary to learn how she began her summer project. I’m now one month into my summer research, and I’m pleased to report that I’ve finished a draft of one paper, and I’m beginning to work on the statistical analysis of another paper. Of course, the first paper that I’ve completed still isn’t ready for publication and the data analysis for the second paper doesn’t predict any groundbreaking medical news. Everything is taking me longer than…
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