January 2024: Getting Back into the Swing of Things!

         “Out with the old, and in with the new”, as my aunt likes to say. After a few winter freezes to start the month off, we have officially hit the ground running this semester. Something that I have “re” noticed on my daily walk from the parking lot to class is the Hippocratic Oath artwork at the corner of Tulane Ave and S. Villere. It is such a blessing to be one semester closer to finally taking the oath myself. 

    This semester, we have two new “journal club” style courses, Neuropharmacology and Endocrine Pharmacology. In these courses, we not only have the opportunity to research on topics that interest us, but we are directly learning how to dissect scientific articles and deliver them in our own words in our presentations. As someone who is interested in public health, I think it is so important for healthcare providers to not only understand complex scientific information, but also digest it for ourselves and disseminate it in an compassionate, digestible way for our patients. Preparing the presentations may not be easy in between the hustle and bustle of our regular courses, but between my three Advances presentations last semester, and the six presentations I have begun, and will continue to, prepare, I can honestly say that my confidence is growing as I exercise these new skills. 

         Notably, I am super excited about our Endocrine Pharm course, because I have a little (large) bit of a personal interest on the effects of stress, and how it can inundate so many areas of our lives, especially our bodies. Though I find so much beauty in the medical profession, I would be a fool to say that it is not stressful one. Ironically, as we aim to keep others healthy, we put ourselves through immense stress as well, which can truly affect our own health. When I take the Hippocratic oath, I will ultimately promise to “do no harm”, and I think part of that is to not only educate patients about the effects of chronic stress —and the resulting inflammation that begets chronic disease—as well as treating said diseases; in short, by reading the book “Why Don’t Zebras Get Ulcers?” In our Endo class semester, I hope to learn how to have a holistic view on my patient’s health, but also how to mitigate my own stress responses, because after all, knowledge is power.