MEETING WITH MY MENTOR: PART 1

During the week of February 13 to February 19, the big event that occurred was my first mentor visit with Dr. Brinkman at Baylor Heart Hospital in Plano. Although Dr. Brinkman has such a busy schedule, he still took out some time out of his day to meet with me, which I greatly appreciate. When I sat down with him, we primarily went over he mentor handbook, discussed my product proposal, and also talked about some of the cases that I can watch. Along with the mentor visit, I also revised and edited my final product proposal, and I will continue to do so because I believe that there is always room for improvement. We started off by talking about the mentor handbook, and I told him about some commitments he must uphold and showed him the forms he will have to fill out through the course of the mentorship. I also let him know about final presentation night and the final product. Speaking of final product, we next talked about the pros and cons of my final product proposal. Dr. Brinkman was pleased about my ambitious goal of making a brand new aortic valve that is cheaper, but he suggested that I should take a slightly different approach and focus on one aspect of making a new valve and focus on that rather than trying to make a brand new valve itself as of right now. The reason he suggested this idea was because there are currently many surgeons, scientists and PhD holders that have been working on this issue for over 30 years, and still have not come to a conclusive breakthrough. Although my idea was a very big project to work on alone, Dr. Brinkman made me understand to break up the project over the course of my undergraduate and medical school years and keep on researching the topic. Although after talking to Dr. Brinkman I gained many ideas on how to further better my product, I found myself questioning many things that I thought I had already figured out, such as constantly ask myself what aspect should I focus on? What am I going to need to do to complete the task? Where exactly do I direct my research from here? I was most successful this week by figuring out that I must focus on one aspect of making the valve rather than overwhelming myself with making a brand new aortic valve. I want to learn more about the bio fluidity of the current valves, compare and contrast many valves, and also watch an aortic valve replacement surgery.