On the road to Immersion (Week 1)

 

I use mathematics, mechanics and modeling tools to solve clinicaly relevant problems. After working in an academic lab for a long time, a gap between “theory” and “practice” often begins to form. This gap becomes even more profound in translational biomedical research in which I am interested in. Ideas conceived in a lab where everything is almost perfect (modeled phenomena isolated from external perturbations) often fail when the said research is disseminated into a complex environment – the human body – where conditions are seldom “lab-like”. So, what do we do? A viable solution will be to conduct research and design technology with the efficacy of a engineer and the perpective of a clinician. Pursuance of such a solution requires an engineer like me to understand the psychology and observe the practices of clinicians who look at patients on a regular basis. Starting June 8th , I was given an oppurtunity in the form a summer immersion program to pursue this goal of mine.


So far, it has been a week and I am already loving it. Back at Cornell University, I work on furthering the design of left ventricular assist devices (LVADs). I have seen different LVADs, their internal components, animations of their working but had never seen one hooked to a living-breathing patient. On my first day under the mentorship of Dr. Irina Sobol (my clinical mentor), I got to be part of a clinical visit where I saw a patient hooked to a LVAD. If I am being completely honest, the sight of a wire coming out from a person’s stomach (the connection of the LVAD to its power source) was shocking for me. But this shock quickly changed to joy when I learnt that the patient was really happy with its performance. This was a different feeling altogether as it was the ultimate validation that the research I do works!! In addition, I learnt how a typical LVAD checkup is done. Apart from this, the rest of the week was mostly about preping for the next 2 months i.e., what I am going to do – the clinical and research aspect of my immersion term. Got my schedule for the clinical rounds that I will be doing with the team of clinicians at the Perkin Centre for heart failure, the LVAD clinic with the nurse practisioner and what I am most excited is being part of ramp studies which I have only read about in clincial journal papers. Overall, this is going to be a unique experience which I am looking forward to.

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