Julie and Julia

Good news! For all of my loyal readers, I have decided to try to revive this blog! I am sure no one reads this anymore; however, after some inspiration from "Julie and Julia", I want to give this a go. It's rather late, but I hope to post tomorrow morning. While I am in PhD phase right now, I have CLINIC tomorrow! I am quite excited. I love the Huntington's Diesease Clinic. Now if I could just decide if I wanted to be neurologist or a psychiatrist, I would be golden. Well peeps, good night and I look forward to sharing my experiences with you. Until tomorrow.

Mentoring

I am not exactly sure why...but I thoroughly enjoy mentoring students younger than myself. To be honest, that was a motivating factor in my initiaion of the blog. While I am far from being a senior student in the program, I have the opportunity as a second year student to talk with undergrads and those just entering my program about why I chose MD/PhD as my pathway, how I got here, and what it has has been like thus far. I really enjoyed it. Perhaps I just like to hear myself talk, but I think it stems more from a desire to teach at some level. Also, I feel like I entered this pathway with no significant resources, so I feel the need to help others learn about the ins and outs. Plus I love sharing something I am so passionate about. (Don't ever get me started about music or I will never shut up.)

I guess what I am getting at is that please feel free to leave comments if you have any questions about MD/PhD and MSTP. I would be more than happy to answer your questions.

The Joy of Presentations

So as I mentioned yesterday I had the joy of giving a presentation. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of being a procrastinator especially with projects. (Yeah I know something I need to grow out of...fast!!) Anyways fortunately I work well under pressure. Neverthess....after have a 12 day vacation and spending very little time preparing for this presentation despite having all the time in the world, I drove from home on Sunday from northern Home State to University State in about 6.5 hours, which was the longest time I have driving straight. I then started immediately on my presentation working on my power point slides. I was to present a review and critique on an evidence based medicine paper for a course entitled "Introduction to Scientitic/Clinical Literature" for MSTP and MD students entering their M2 year. This is the first year they run this course, so it is work in progress. I think the concept it great but the execution has left a little to be desired. After the first two classes that were supposed to give us the tool to effectively read and analyze clinical literature, I was disappointed. I didn't feel that I gained anything valuable and hadn't made any progress from what little knowledge had picked up from evidence based medicine lectures during our M1 year. However, now that I have completed the presentation, I have new appreciation for the challenge of reading clinical literature. This paper contained a ridiculous amount of data presented all in charts...not a graph to be found. No figures legends. Poor explanations of methods. I could go on and on. (Oh by the way, this was a JAMA article, so it wasn't as if I was reviewing an article from a unknown journal.) After slaving over my slides, I did actually gain a few tools in understanding how careful one must read in order to fully understand the limitations certain clinical literature presents. A lot of has to do with the challenge of clinical medicine and controlling for all of its variables. However, I do think that standards at least in terms of how things are published and perhaps even how trials are designed and executed need to be more strict. I definately think that basic science has a leg up in this regards; however, basic science couldn't function if it didn't follow the utmost in scientific study design, finding appropiate and effective controls, and follow strict publication standards. I am not saying that basic science doesn't have it issues; however, I think that in order for evidence based medicine to continue to improve in this information age, it needs to continue to challenge itself to increase its standards. Perhaps I am biased and niave. I realize that clinical trials are extremely difficult, costly, and hard to control. Medicine is something that is impossible to control for every variable. I am excited to see what the future brings; nevertheless, I feel so fortunate as a future physician scientist, who maybe one day be involved in managing and designing clinical trials, to have so much experience in basic science as work on my PhD. The scientic skills I will learn in the basic science will be invaluable to me in clinical science. I could be wrong but I think some of the "mistakes" I find maybe to lack of experience in the basic sciences by the MD authors. Anyways, back to my presentation. In the end, I probably could have spent more time trimming down the amout of text I had on each slide and trying to transfer the data from charts into reader friendly charts, but I had limited time. Overall I think the presentation went quite well. I was definately nervous, espeically because I have never given a 45 minute talk before and have not giving talks as regularily as I did in college. It has been almost year since giving a 15 minute talk or longer. While it was difficult to read the feedback sheets afterwards, I received a lot of helpful comments. For instance, I need to continue to reduce the number of "umms and ahhhs" and not sway back and forth so much during the presentation. Both habits that I have been aware of but still struggle to eliminate. Hopefully, the more I present the more relaxed I will become. In the end, it was good experience and glad that I had the experience.

Returning to the ol' bump and grind

Well I am back from my glorious vacation in Home State. I will provide a update hopefully tomorrow. At this point, I am too exhausted to go into detail. I gave a 45 minute presentation, and I am beat. More to come soon!

Vacation from University

Currently I am on a 12 day vacation from life at the University. Being that I am between my M1 and M2 years, I am conducting my lab rotations, which are 6 weeks long so 12 weeks of my summer must be spent doing research; however, our summer in the College of Medicine (COM) is 15 weeks long giving me 3 weeks of down time. Prior to this vacation I had taken some long weekends. On this vacation I get to travel home to my Home State and stay with my parents in my Hometown. So far I have been able to see a lot of my family and old friends from University of Home State and Hometown High School. Beyond that I have been complete bum sitting around my parents house watching bad TV and surfing the internet. It's great to be completely lazy for a while, but I do find that I am most happpy in life when I am rather busy. However, when given the opportunity I will revert to my lowest energy state. For now, I will just enjoy it as I look forward to going on trip with my whole family to my grandparents, who own a cabin other part of Home State where it is so peaceful and beatiful.

Inaugural Post - What is a MSTP?

Currently I am entering my second year in a Medical Scientist Training Program. For those of you unfamiliar with such a program, MSTP are combined MD/PhD programs, which receive funding from National Institutes of Health (NIH). Approximately 40 MSTPs exist across the country; however, there are many more MD/PhD programs, which do not receive the MSTP designation as in no NIH funding. While in a MSTP, students receive a stipend and pay no tuition while they pursue both a MD and PhD concurrently. Typically students will first complete the first two year of medical school (M1 and M2 years), which are mostly didactic curriculum. During those first two years, students may conduct lab rotations to determine who their PhD mentor may be as well as graduate coursework. After completing the first step of the boards (USMLE Step 1), students will start graduate school. Initially students will work on completing what remaining graduate coursework, lab rotations (if necessary), and then start in their lab. Students typically take 3-5 years to complete their PhD and defend their thesis. Then students return to medical school and conduct their clerkships completing their M3 and M4 years. After attaining their MD/PhD, students will typically go on to residency and then may complete a fellowship and/or post-doc. In terms of career options, the number of opportunity are endless. Some may go into industry or work for the government. Most will go in academia spending anywhere from 0-100% in clinic and/or research. Often MD/PhD will split their time between clinic and lab in 50/50 or 80/20 fashion with a majority of the time spent conducting research. Hopefully this provides a bit of a context for the journey that I have embarked on.

I have never been able to maintain a journal, so I am slightly puzzled by my desire to initiate a blog. It will be interesting to see how often I will post on here; however, I will promise to do my best as long as there appears to be audience interested in my ramblings.

I look forward to sharing my journey with you.