Hello! My name is Christina McCarthy and I am a rising junior at Tulane University. I am majoring in Sociology with a minor in Spanish on the pre-medical track. This summer I will be interning as a research assistant in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at LSU Medical School.
I began my work as a research assistant in August of 2018. Prior to beginning my work at LSU, I had never worked in a laboratory setting. Being on the premedical track, I was interested in exploring the arena of laboratory research, specifically in the Department of Orthopedics as it is a specialty of medicine that has always been of interest to me. Now that I have worked at LSU for almost a year, my responsibilities and laboratory skills have grown immensely. After mastering the techniques of immunohistochemistry, biophotonic in-vivo imaging, grossing bone samples, and embedding and sectioning tissue, I am ready to assist on our lab’s overarching research question.
This summer I hope to further my current research project at LSU, which examines the genetic basis for a health disparity between African American and Caucasian patients after a total-knee replacement surgery, and to expand upon this question by combining my knowledge in the field of Sociology, Public Health, and Genetics.
Since health disparities are a common topic of discussion in many of my sociology classes, I am excited to use this knowledge I have acquired through my time thus far at Tulane alongside my expertise in genetics and cellular biology to possibly discover a solution. Essentially, it is my hope to help discover a way to ensure that my research question not only brings to light important biological and genetic findings, but also that it provides a solution/treatment plan that will aid the recovery process, after a total-knee replacement, for African American patients (we have so far found that African American patients have a longer and more painful recovery process after receiving this surgery than Caucasian patients).
Additionally, I am interested in learning how to collect and statistically analyze the data that I will be gathering. Each Monday I will prepare to scrub into the OR for total-knee replacement in order to collect samples of the femoral condyle, tibial plateau, synovial tissue, and muscle from each of the patients undergoing the procedure. When I arrive back to my lab, I will begin to gross each sample so that they are ready for processing and further examination.
I would like to expand upon my analysis skills as I am used to preparing these samples, but have little experience analyzing the samples under the microscope and collecting data for our research. Once I have mastered this, I would like to learn how to prepare a presentation to present my research and how to make my question/objective clear, concise, and comprehensible to people who may not be as informed or have knowledge on this topic.
This independent research project that I will be conducting this summer relates to NCI’s mission in educating women in underrepresented fields. Research is a field that is dominated by men and excludes many women. Due to the stigma that women “are not intelligent enough” to be successful in careers related to science and mathematics, many women become discouraged and choose not to pursue a STEM career.
Women throughout the world are underpaid in comparison to their male counterparts who hold similar degrees and levels of education. It is my ambition that as a future physician I will be able to combine my work as a medical professional and researcher to fully understand each case I am presented with.
I am excited to enter the OR each Monday and learn how to better marginalized groups patients who experience more pain after total-replacement surgeries in comparison to other populations of patients. Although my work will not begin for another two weeks, I am utilizing my time at home to research more about the anatomy of the knee, while simultaneously learning about how certain health disparities plague specific populations.
I can’t wait to take you all on my journey with me this summer!
Bye for now,
Christina