Harry Zou Week 8

My last week was a busy week, both on the clinical side and also on the research side. I shadowed in the clinic and also in the hospital. On Wednesday, I shadowed a pulmonologist, Dr. Meredith Turetz in her practice. In her practice, Dr. Turetz mostly sees patients with bronchiectasis as well as asthma. The first patient came in as a follow up for severe asthma exacerbations and Dr. Turetz prescribed Symbicort, a medicine that she liked since it had both a fast acting component in a steroid as well as a long acting component in the bronchodilator. In between patients, we also had an interesting conversation on the changing landscape of asthma medication with more biologics being approved now. She also saw a patient who had bronchiestasis as well as a previous non-tuberculosis mycobacteria (NTM) infection. It was interesting to me to learn that even though the airways look dilated in bronchiestasis, the flimsy nature of the airways causes them to collapse resulting in restricted breathing. The rest of the patients were patients that had minimal issues that Dr. Turetz resolved quickly. I also was able to see pulmonary function tests in which the  breathing of patients was tested;  I was surprised how even the diffusion data came back in real-time. 

In addition, I spent a day shadowing in the pulmonary inpatient consult service. I again saw some patients who had NTM, but also many patients who were in the hospital for COPD exacerbations. It was interesting to see in the shadowing, how most of the consults were for the pulmonologist to see if a bronchoscopy would be appropriate and tolerated by the patient. I also was able to see a procedure in which pus was sucked out from a patient's chest. Finally, I observed the rounds in this service and it was interesting to see the differences with rounds in the MICU. 

On the research side, I submitted all of the samples for sequencing after NanoDropping them. I just got the sequencing results back, and will analyze them. I will then create a report with my protocol as well as a summary of my results for Dr. Brown and a lab tech to potentially continue my work. Overall, I had a positive experience this summer and would like to thank everyone who helped in facilitating immersion. 

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