MedEx Day 20/21 - July 26, 2021

Today was the first day of the 5th week of MedEx. (I am also including my blog for Tuesday in this post, since I had no clinical day/ did not have MedEx on this day but did use the Kaplan resources). To begin the day, Dr. Urrea-Mendoza, a neurologist from Prisma Health, spoke to Tier III. The focus of his presentation was to introduce all of Tier III to the field of Neurology, as well as to discuss his research and talk about Covid-19 and Neurology. I was reminded of the fact that Neurology is not just the study of the brain, but it is also the study of both the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems. This leads to Neurology treating myriad diseases like ALS, MS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy, etc. Dr. Urrea-Mendoza is in charge of Phases 2-4 of FDA Clinical Trials for Neurology drugs at Prisma Health. He went through the different levels of FDA Approval for drugs and also talked about the Covid-19 vaccine/ how it went through all of these phases. Through this I learned more about the clinical research process from a physician's perspective. Dr. Urrea-Mendoza also talked a little bit about his background from Colombia and his experiences within healthcare/ how healthcare is different around the world, helping to increase my cultural competence. Lastly, Dr. Urrea-Mendoza touched on how Covid-19 is having long-lasting effects on some who get it. Some patients who are diagnosed with Covid-19 develop Parkinsonism (they look like they have Parkinson's with tremors, etc. but don't truly have the disease). This has led some neurologists to believe that there could be a spike in Parkinson's disease down the road from Covid-19. I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Urrea-Mendoza's presentation and loved him testing our critical thinking skills through providing scenarios to work through/ talk about.

After this, the rest of the day centered around having time to work on our Interdisciplinary Board Presentations and Kaplan Test Prep. I enjoyed both of these things and felt that I was able to see a lot of progress in my preparation for the MCAT/ in my presentation skills.