Amanda Berbert: Outside of the Laboratory BACK

Published by AFAR

I am in a vascular research laboratory at the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah for the summer.  I am looking at the blood pressure and blood flow responses in the peripheral vasculature during exercise in heart failure (HF) patients. Things are going well in lab, but in this entry I would like to talk about the exciting things that are going on outside of the laboratory. I have enjoyed recruiting patients in the hospital, attending geriatric lectures, and shadowing geriatricians.

First, as with any clinical research, there is patient recruitment. Our laboratory is lucky enough to have a patient coordinator that handles all of the patient scheduling and consent forms. I have become so grateful for her the past month! In order to see what she does though, I have spent a couple of days following her. One part of her job is visiting a cardiovascular clinic at the VA Hospital every Monday. We are in a VA building next to the hospital, so it is just a 10 minute walk. At the clinic, it was interesting to see how she summarized in layperson’s terms what we study in the lab. I also appreciated how many people agreed to participate in our clinical studies. The main things that limited recruiting people were criteria we have for our studies, such as being within a certain ejection fraction—which is a measure of how much blood the heart pumps each beat—and body weight.

In addition to spending time in the cardiovascular clinic with our patient coordinator, I also was able to learn more about geriatrics. I enjoyed a lecture that was given on assessing fall risk in older adults. I have also loved shadowing different geriatricians. That has been one of my favorite parts of the summer. I shadowed a couple doctors at the VA hospital and one at a rest home. At the VA, I loved hearing veterans talk about their war experiences. It was interesting to see how complex their lives had been, as well as how complex their medical problems often were. At the rest home, I was impressed by the relationship the geriatrician had with her patients. With one patient it was hard to glean any verbal information, but the doctor said she could tell a lot from the patient’s mannerisms and actions after knowing her for so long. All of these lecture and shadowing experiences have helped me to see the needs that exist in geriatric medicine for further research.

Amanda Berbert
University of Utah

"Diary of an MSTAR Student" follows scholars in the 2012 Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) Program, highlighting their summer experiences. As they continue their path of research, training and clinical practice, read their daily thoughts at www.afar.org/mstarblog. New diary entries are posted every day, so check back soon.