NEWS
NEWS
IN THIS ISSUE
Are Gene Patents Psychiatric Pharmacy News Briefs » PAGE 3 Good for Health Care? UCSF practitioner talks about Journal Club » PAGE 5 The experts weigh in at UCSF managing mental illness. Puzzles » PAGE 7 » PAGE 6 » PAGE 3
Synapse The UCSF Student Newspaper
Thursday, November 14, 2013
NEWS
Precision Medicine Lecture Series Debuts in Pharmacy School
Student-led initiative receives wide support By Priya Jayachandran Staff Writer
O
ver a decade ago, a new health care model was conceived to transform the approach to patient care from “one-size-fits-all” to “personalized.” Today, this model incorporates advances in genomics and medical technology to create precise techniques for identifying risk factors and preventing disease. Furthermore, it allows health care providers to precisely manage and treat disease states through patient-specific, personalized therapies. The advancement of new technologies has led to the rebirth of this personalized approach under the heading of “precision medicine.” At UCSF, this hot topic has not escaped the attention of its student leaders. This summer, the School of Pharmacy actively supported the creation of two student-led initiatives relating to precision medicine. The first initiative, led by second-year
PRECISION MEDICINE » PAGE 4
synapse.ucsf.edu
Volume 58, Number 10
NEWS
Nursing Alumnae Pay it Forward With Helpful Reference Website By Hannah Patzke Staff Writer
A
fter spending years studying and preparing to become a nurse practitioner (NP), you’ve finally reached your goal. You’ve taken your boards and passed and you are officially a practitioner. What do you do now? Well, the obvious answer includes some job searching and maybe some well-earned relaxation, but three new NPs decided to spend their energy helping others. Sarah Oppenheim, Emily Rodda and Shawna Mitchell Sisler got together the summer after graduation and put together a website filled with all of the links, references and knowledge they had gleaned from their UCSF training experience, and npstudent.com came into being. “I couldn’t think of a better way to ‘pay it forward,’” said Oppenheim. “The site gave me something productive to occupy my free time with as well as an outlet for cataloging resources and references that I'd saved throughout my time as a student at UCSF.” Sisler, who had approached Oppenheim about starting the site, said she wanted a catalog of all the best resources they had come across in their graduate school education.
UCSF Hosts Pre-Health Conference
Photo courtesy of Julia Seaman/PSPG (Left to right) Sarah Oppenheim, Shawna Mitchell Sisler and Emily Rodda have launched npstudent. com, a resource website for nursing students.
“Every professor, preceptor and colleague had something great to add to the list,” said Sisler. “Once I found a compatible platform for the site, it built itself. The three of us were able to take a basic structure and make it our very best study guide we’ve ever made.”
Dia de Los Muertos Conference Showcases Careers in Health
A
UCSF post-baccalaureate Adriana Martinez practices her suturing technique under the watchful eye of second-year medical student Mariya Samoylova.
NP STUDENT » PAGE 4
NEWS
By Yi Lu Editor
Photos by Yi Lu/MS2
The site is a well-designed resource for pediatric nurse practitioners. The navigation bar at the top links you to Well-Child Check, Study by System, Meds, SOAP Notes and more. There is a fantastic list
driana Martinez threaded her first simple interrupted suture with the dexterity of an old pro. But since this was the first time that she had ever held a needle driver, the UCSF post-baccalaureate could be forgiven for then dropping her needle and having to look across the lab table for instruction on what to do next with her pig’s foot. “I didn’t know if it would be similar to sewing, but I’m realizing that it’s not,” Martinez said, laughing. “It’s totally different.” Martinez and over 150 other undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students from across Northern California and beyond converged onto the UCSF campus November 2 for the 21st Annu-
al Dia de los Muertos Pre-Health Conference. Organized by the Chicanos/Latinos in Health Education (CHE) chapter at UC Berkeley, with significant support from the CHE chapter at UCSF, this year’s conference provided students the opportunity to learn more about health careers from the perspective of the University of California’s only graduate school in the health sciences. “I think UCSF is unique, in that we can really provide a connection to a variety of health professions,” said Maria Quezada, a second-year medical student who was helping to organize the conference. “I think that all the schools did a great job harnessing all the resources available at UCSF and presenting them to the UC Berkeley CHE organization.” For the UCSF students, the responsibility of helping to organize the Dia de Los Muertos
DIA DE LOS MUERTOS » PAGE 6