Carlos Urrea/ Dr. Sabrina Strickland: Week 1

This is the first week at NYC. 

We arrived on Sunday and started getting settled in and explored the city. On Monday, our team met with Carly and Dr. Kelly Gillen to go over the summer immersion program expectations and made sure we were ready to meet with our clinician mentors. This day we got our IDs and started getting ready to shadow our clinician mentors in both the clinic and in the OR as well as getting familiarized with our research projects. On Wednesday, I met Dr. Strickland and enjoyed watching her treating patients in her clinic. It was interesting to me how knowledgeable she is about the knee anatomy and able to identify what will be the best course of treatment for each patient. I also met her office team as well as the PA and Resident that mostly work with her. I look forward to more days in the clinic where I get to see patient-clinician interactions. On Friday, I started my research project in the Biomechanical Engineering Lab where I got to see testing of different surgical techniques to restore shoulder stability. To measure shoulder stability a cadaveric shoulder was loaded in a mechanical fixture and applied a load until it dislocated. Different surgical techniques were performed on the shoulder were the researchers hypothesized it would increase or decrease shoulder stability. It was really interesting to see everything that goes into biomechanical research and how researchers interact with clinicians to understand how surgical techniques can be improved.

I look forward to keep working with Dr Strickland and the Biomechanical Engineering Lab.





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