Mary Neil's Pharmacology Blog

Total service hours as of 11/30: 12 This month I was able to volunteer at a farmer’s market in Mid City selling candles for Hagar’s House. Hagar’s house provides a safe space for women and children, and they have created opportunities for the women to earn money while staying there by making candles, lip balms, and herbal teas. It was so great to be able to safely engage with the community and the other vendors at the market while also feeling like we were making a difference for the women that would receive the sales proceeds.  I also volunteered with World Relief Durham while home in North Carolina for the Thanksgiving holiday. I prepared and delivered a meal for a refugee family that came from Afghanistan just two weeks prior. I attempted to make shorwa and shir berenj, which involved ensuring the meat I bought was halal and that I followed proper food preparation guidelines. When I delivered the meal to the family, we couldn’t see each other’s faces well (due to masks and distance)

Wow, did October fly by! After knocking out three modules in three weeks I feel like almost an expert on autonomic nervous system and cardiovascular pharmacology. A lot of the content this month pertained to problems more commonly seen in adult patients, so it was a steep learning curve for this former pediatric scribe. With so many drugs to memorize in a relatively short amount of time, I found that podcasts could be a great resource to turn to when I could not look at a screen anymore and needed to go for a run or do dishes. I shared my playlists with several classmates and plan to keep doing so from here on out.     Learning about CV pharm this month really hit home for me since both my grandparents have AFib and my grandpa recently had a fall. Knowing the mechanisms of antiarrhythmics and reversal agents of the anticoagulants and being able to explain them to my mom really put us all at ease. Dr. Clarkson – I really took the “be able to explain this stuff to your grandma” to heart!