Evangeline Grace Pharmacology ePortfolio

Thankfully March has been a pretty calm month. I got through my two favorite modules- neurology and psychopharmacology and I found both to be fascinating. There were so many drugs that I recognized from my work as a case manager that I took for granted. Certain drugs being more or less "last-lines-of-defense" was something I definitely remembered (TCAs and MAOIs in particular), but some things like bupropion being an especially good choice for people who can previously suffered from a substance use disorder surprised me but made absolute sense in retrospect. It was also interesting to me how you could make inferences (though never absolute determinations) of where someone was on their medication journey based on what medications they were taking as even among the newer drugs there was more or less a preferred first-line, second-line, etc. of treatment. My second point kind of leads to my last point, however, in that my experience as a case manager made me realize as I was stu

Well, I successfully survived Mardi Gras! That week was crazy but I'm glad to have had the chance to rest and walk around New Orleans. The energy really is infectious.  We completed the reproductive module this month and I was surprised by how interesting it was. There are more forms of estrogen and progesterone than I thought. We started the CNS module and I've also enjoyed that as someone who hopes to go into psychiatry. I had my first presentation in Neuroendocrinology and I'm pleased to say I think it went really well. Our topic was "Stress and Metabolism" and I chose to do my portion on the "freshman fifteen" myth (in reality it's more like the "freshman five"), weight changes in response to the pandemic, and personality features seen in overeaters. Later this week I'll be picking a research paper on a novel method of treating bipolar disorder and presenting it to the class. It's a topic I've always been passionate about so

I’m super glad to be back to Tulane! Hard to believe that we only have a few more months in the program. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned already- it’s definitely been one of the most intense academic experiences of my life.  This semester we’re going to be doing a lot more presentations- I actually had none this month which I’m grateful for but I will be having an extremely busy March. Last semester we just had Advances for presentations but this semester there are two more classes that require them. I'm grateful that I'll be able to read through so many new studies and I hope I can do them justice. One book we're over the class is called Why Don't Zebras Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. In the first chapter he talks about how worrying about things that are unlikely to happen, like a worldwide pandemic, can have bad long-term effects on your health. The book was published in 1994 so I suppose he can be forgiven for his optimism. Regardless, I've been trying to

November was a wild month. The cardiovascular unit was a difficult but extremely high-yield module. So many drugs that influence the heart and blood pressure have drug interactions and contraindications. Considering how many people are on these drugs (or will be eventually, considering how common cardiovascular disease is) it was very worthwhile to go in depth on the subject. The renal-pulmonary module was more straightforward which I appreciated. I was surprised at how much diuretics are used in the treatment of high-blood pressure though, and the sheer number of drugs you need to manage hypertension as it progresses. In terms of volunteering I did two shifts at Touro hospital. The first one was remarkably busy with us running around and restocking carts constantly. The second shift was on Thanksgiving and we had four patients in the three hours I was there. There was a free Thanksgiving dinner for anyone who went into the cafeteria and a potluck going on in the employee lounge so tha

 Another month done! October seemed to go even faster than last month. We went into some more difficult modules this month- ANS and CV. We had so many drugs to memorize but luckily my drug charts were really helpful with this. I’m trying to make sure I periodically review the drug charts for past modules as I don’t want to end up trying to cram hundreds of drugs for the final exam at the end of the year. Luckily the mechanisms of action for these past two modules have been fairly straightforward- the main concern with the ANS module was just memorizing all of the various drugs. We set up a regular study group and I feel like that’s helped a lot.  I had my volunteer orientation at Touro Hospital and was really impressed with their set-up. Everything has been streamlined so that the average waiting time is less than fifteen minutes. The night of my first shift it was actually pretty busy with extremely quick turnover for rooms. I spent a lot of time running around refilling carts, cleani

       September seemed to pass by so quickly! There's always a lot to do in the program. So far we've been through three modules and eight total tests- I think the latest one where we discussed antibiotics, antifungals, and antivirals was my favorite of the three so far. I gave my first presentation in Advances this month on remdesivir which I'm glad to say went very well. In addition to presenting the study Dr. Katakam gave us I also got to present a review written by a former Pharmacology MS student on the topic. Now that I've done that I've been thinking more on what opportunities I might want to take advantage of while I'm here.      Much of this month was spent getting my affairs in order and making sure everything was set up for the rest of the year. I completed my volunteer training with ReadyNOLA just in case a hurricane hit but luckily we have avoided any major storms so far this year. With Hurricane Ian hitting Florida this late in the hurricane seaso