Derek Berglund: Conducting a Retrospective Chart Review

by Gwen Cullen

I am now near the midpoint of my retrospective chart review as part of the MSTAR program and the project has been an even greater learning tool than I originally anticipated. I have been looking at medical records for quite some time now and thus the daily process of reviewing them has become fairly automatic. However, I am still intrigued by the information I find while reading through cases. After looking through many records, I have begun to pick up on trends even before performing statistical analysis. For example, in my study on elderly patients undergoing surgery for hip fracture,…

READ MORE

Lalitha Kunduru: The Challenges of Patient Recruitment

by AFAR

I have completed over a month of research and have fallen into a daily routine. I have learned the difficulties of gaining approval from clinics to recruit patients there. I realize that it is a concern for clinics because patients with appointments are generally sick and do not want to be bothered by research studies. They may already be anxious about having to visit the doctor and don’t want to fill out any unnecessary paperwork, especially for a medical student who is not treating them directly. Although I have accepted that getting rejected is a part of patient…

READ MORE

Anne Richardson Wright: Drafting a Manuscript

by AFAR

Today marks the halfway point in my 8-week MSTAR experience here at the University of North Carolina (UNC). The week began with the usual 10 a.m. database meeting with the primary investigators (MDs and PhDs), statisticians, physical therapist, epidemiologists, and research students such as myself. This is a fantastic meeting to sit in on because it focuses on all aspects of data processing, from collection to analysis. It is an arena for brainstorming, organizing and clarifying the existing and/or potential databases maintained by the Thurston Arthritis Research Center. At this meeting I spent most of my time absorbing information…

READ MORE

Brett Marinelli: Differentiating Heart Cells in the Lab

by AFAR

My MSTAR summer began with joining the Cardiovascular Research Center at Mount Sinai directed by Dr. Roger Hajjar. The group I work with focuses on the differentiation of human cardiomyocytes, heart muscle cells, from both embryonic and induced pluripotent (iPS) stem cells lines. Going in with little knowledge of either cell culturing techniques or the methods used to characterize cells, I anticipated both an exciting and challenging introduction to this area of bench-top medicine. Now almost a month into my MSTAR research summer, I have experienced both the satisfactions and frustrations that come with the field of cell differentiation. A…

READ MORE

Amanda Berbert: Outside of the Laboratory

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…

READ MORE