Evangeline Grace Pharmacology ePortfolio

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 cart...

       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 hurri...