Week 2: Learning and Overcoming failures

 Despite the busy first week, this week was slower than I expected. Not everything was as new as before, but I still got to have a fresher experience, notably with medical imaging and microbiology.

I spent my time doing computer analyses mostly and reviewing scientific papers. Just like the previous week, I shadowed my clinician on her morning rounds. However, unlike the previous week I learned a lot about the social aspect of the clinic: what is the course of action to take if a vulnerable patient's guardian does not promote a safe "healing" environment nor encourages compliance when it comes to treatment; or what if no one on the team can effectively communicate with the patient due to language barrier or non compliance, how to tackle financial difficulties. In the past, I presumed that each entities in the hospital could if desired worked independently from one another. This week's experience made it clear how unrealistic this assumption was. Not only the team is very diverse when doing rounds (MDs, PA, PharmD, RNs, Social workers, etc..) but they also make sure to be on the same page regarding treatment options and other problems a patient is facing or might face in the future. One of my goals for this immersion was to experience the life in clinic in the most complete way possible. 

This week I experience what it could be like to be the middle man between different teams. Although brutal for I made many mistakes, it is valuable in the sense that it teaches me how to deal with collaborations, how to effectively communicate between different groups with similar or different purposes. For example, a physician might order the collection of a variety of samples both for medical and research purposes. In the lab analyzing the samples there could be different teams taking care of those samples depending on their purpose. As the middle man between the two groups, I had  to make sure I kept tabs on what was going where and for what purpose, as well as how to ensure that the communication between the groups would be efficient.

Another valuable clinical experience I had concerned medical imaging: how MRI's work, what happens on the patient side, the technician side, as well as with the physician. Although not directly related to my academic research field, I am glad to have participated in the training sessions as software development today can be applied to many other things. It was interesting to see how interconnected different fields of medicine can be.

Clinical research was also part of the things I wanted to experience this week. In the labs I went to, clinical research testing was happening in parallel to any other medical testing needed. The main differences were the sample collection methods and analysis, the consent forms signed by the patients prior to enrollment in the study. In the research studies, while it is true that of of the patients we see in the clinic during rounds are enrolled, many more were past patients or never patients of the facility. This makes me curious about the enrolment process for healthy subjects: how do they hear about the study vs how different can the enrolment conversation be for healthy subject and affected subjects.

Going through this week definitely opened my eyes in a lot of ways. Like the saying "it takes a village to raise a child", it does take an entire hospital to ensure a patient's recovery and safe transition to normalcy. Though awards like the Nobel price reward individual investigators, much goes behind the official face of the research. Thinking that we could "change the world" alone would be wrong for discovery and innovation happens at the crossroad of ideas.