Kerry Bertke: Making Progress with Preventative Medicine

by AFAR

As I wrap up my time at UNC Chapel Hill and my on-site work at the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention I realize how fast eight weeks can go. I remain extremely excited about prevention medicine and believe even more strongly that speaking to individuals about diet and exercise, and offering methods to change poor habits, is important. In addition, my visit to Lenoir County and my interaction with the participants demonstrated how determined and successful a group of people can be when all are motivated and supported in their efforts to change lifestyle habits. This is a…

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Ann Tukpah: Understanding the Significance of "Normal" vs. "Abnormal" Test Results

by AFAR

We are a few weeks into the MSTAR program and the summer days have been long but fleeting. Our most recent didactic session was truly dynamic; topics from prostate cancer screening, survey development and funding and grant writing were studied. It was an informative and lively session. I’m continuing my work at the Non-Invasive Cardiology unit at Mount Sinai, studying patient outcomes after a myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) test. My project will investigate differences between patients over age 80 that have an “abnormal” MPI study and those that have a “normal” study. We will also…

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Susanna O'Kula: Language Fluency & Care Transitions

by AFAR

The three weeks after my last post proved vastly different from the first few I spent at the Bronx VA: our patient recruitment jumped up to 5-7 a week! By now, I imagine I could administer the baseline questionnaire in my sleep. In addition to study enrollment and follow-up phone calls, I've spent a lot of time doing chart abstraction for the nearly 60 patients now enrolled in the study to better understand "my" population. Even within a geriatrics cohort, the range of the patients' health status amazes me—one chart might show thirteen active medications, six chronic conditions,…

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Elizabeth Pedowitz: Moving from Data Collection to Data Analysis

by AFAR

My research is continuing to go well. My project consists of looking at how much time physicians in the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors (MSVD) program spend providing care outside of home visits. Physicians have been filling out research forms I’ve created for every interaction/event they have outside of the home visits related to patient care. I’m currently in the last week of data collection. I’ve been entering data for the last couple of weeks and I’m nearing the end of it, thankfully. Entering the data has taken much more time than…

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Ranjith Babu: Reviewing Charts and Meeting Patients with Glioblastoma

by AFAR

My experience thus far in the MSTAR program has been both enlightening and motivating. I am currently doing glioblastoma (brain tumor) research at the Duke University Medical Center and have been making good progress. I have identified a cohort for the basis of my projects and am performing chart reviews to extract the necessary data for analysis. I am pretty excited to finish completing all of the data collection and begin analysis, which will surely provide insights for improving the management of glioblastoma in the elderly. Performing chart reviews has also vastly increased my knowledge in the treatments for glioblastoma,…

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