April 2014 Blog  (Total community service hours: 30hrs)

Well… here it is.  My last blog post for the Tulane Masters of Pharmacology Program.  I can’t believe how fast time has gone.  It’s been one stressful, but amazing, year.  Not only did I significantly increase my competitiveness as a medical school candidate, I’ve made memories and friends that I’ll never forget.  Below is a picture that some of us took on one of our last volunteering days:

I enjoyed my time here in New Orleans and now I’m actually contemplating staying and living here through the next year.  This course that requires monthly blog posts really forced me to get out in the community to explore and give back to NOLA.   I volunteered 15 hours at Touro Infirmary, earned another 5 hours participating in an instructor’s study of lead levels in the city and finished up with 30 hours by volunteering at City Park (above photo).  Currently, I am applying for research positions through Tulane and LSU’s medical schools, so wish me luck!  Even though I was homesick at the beginning of this program, I’ve grown to love this city and I’ve made lifelong friends. 

I can’t thank the professors and staff in this program enough… you all have created a truly life changing experience here at Tulane. 

(Volunteering Hours: 15 hrs, not including Environmental Pharm)

March 2014

Now that our NBME Shelf exam is finished, it’s all basically a downhill ride from here! I don’t think that I’ve studied that much for a test ever in my entire life… After about two and half weeks of grueling studying, that monster of an exam is FINALLY over! We had a few days to relax following the Shelf exam, but we had to kick it back into gear this past weekend as we have another exam (in our Cellular Control Mechanisms class) this upcoming Tuesday.  

I am still volunteering at Touro Infirmary in the Emergency Department but in much less frequency than last semester.  As this semester was heavily frontloaded with coursework and studying, I put volunteering on the back burner for a little bit.  However, our class did participate in sampling New Orleans soil to test for lead in and around children’s play areas.  A professor here at Tulane, Dr. Mielke, has been conducting lead research in New Orleans for about 20 years now, I believe.  My classmates and I went around the city and collected samples for Dr. Mielke to test their lead levels and subsequently plot them onto a map.  

Still hard to believe that we barely have a month left of this program and then we’re finished, we’ll be graduating in about a month an a half…

February 2014

Time is REALLY flying by this semester! We have just finished our last block exam for the year… Now we’ll be focusing on studying for our National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Shelf Exam.  The test is a standardized test administered to health professionals to make sure that every person who takes, and passes it, is up to par in their field.  It’s going to be a grueling test to study for, as it’s going to cover all of the material that we’ve learned this year… which is a lot.  Thankfully, we have quite a bit of time to study for it!

Spring Break has just started for us and the break includes Mardi Gras Day.  I’ve never experienced a New Orleans Mardi Gras; I’m both excited and a little scared.  My friends from this program and I traveled to the uptown area to watch a few  of the parades last night and I was just amazed at 1)how many people were there and 2) how extravagant some of those floats were! People really put some time and effort into Mardi Gras. 

I’m going to continue to volunteer this semester, and I’ll most likely be spending most of my volunteering hours at the emergency room at Touro Infirmary. 

January 2014

Another year, another few months of blogs! Last semester ended on an incredibly high note and I just couldn’t wait to get back in the swing of things this semester.  Even though I had THE longest semester of my life (from July to December…) I learned so incredibly much and I valued every moment of my time at Tulane University.  January started off quicker than I thought, we had our first test a week ago and now already we have a test next week and then the next! But, I believe that the fast-paced manner of this program is what makes it so successful and rewarding. 

For volunteering in 2014, I plan to continue donating my time at Touro Infirmary every Monday day for about three or 4 hours.  I am the only volunteer at this shift now so I get to do a lot more activities that are “hands on” than I would if there were other volunteers present.  So far I have only been able to volunteer at Touro once since I’ve returned to New Orleans but I plan to start volunteering every Monday as soon as my schedule mellows out. 

As for Habitat for Humanity. I think I will return but I will try to get into constructing houses rather than working in the Restore store.  I would prefer to be out actually helping to build things that our community needs rather than organizing a store (even though both positions are both very important and crucial to Habitat for Humanity). 

Have a happy January!

November & December 2013

(Volunteering Hours: 44)

Greetings and Happy Holidays!

Well, the semester is winding down and this is the last blog post I’m going to write for 2013! Can’t believe the year is almost over and my fellow students and I are about halfway through with completing our Masters degree at the wonderful Tulane University.  Seems like last week when it was July 17 and were just starting classes here… How time flies!

I am still volunteering at Touro Infirmary Emergency Department (ED) and I plan on continuing to volunteer there next semester when I return from our Winter break.  I have not had any experiences quite like the one I wrote about in my last blog from October… I am referring to when a particular patient, who was coding, came into the ED and ended up passing away on the table.  It was a very sad and strange ordeal and something that I will not forget anytime soon.  There is one experience, however, that I think is worth noting here, even though it may be considered insignificant to some. 

An elderly patient had presented to the ED with a serious, ongoing condition and the doctor was considering whether or not to put him on aggressive treatment that, in the doctor’s words, “may or may not help him.”  The patient’s family was there and the doctor had to explain the situation to them; needless to say, it was an unpleasant conversation for them to have.  The physician left the family to decide what the next step was (the patient was unconscious and could not speak for himself) and immediate family members were allowed to see the patient one by one. 

I noticed that his daughter was extremely torn up about her father’s condition and the possibility of losing him in the near future.  The ED nurses and physicians were just going about their day like normal while this woman was having possibly one of the worst days of her life.  I’m sure that the ED staff sees this kind of thing all the time and they don’t think anything of it, they’re numb to it all.  But for me, this is something that I haven’t dealt with before and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation.  Do I go about my volunteer responsibilities and simply let the woman grieve on her own or do I something to comfort her?

I decided on the latter and brought her a box of tissues, smiling at her as I did so.  Even though I didn’t do anything to help her dad’s health, I could tell that she immediately felt better and was grateful for that one small act.  That experience reminded me that medicine isn’t simply about diagnosis and treatment of a patient; medicine is all around care of the patient, and in this case, their family.