Week 6: Nina

This week, I went to Dr. Samstein's clinic in Chinatown. These past few weeks, I have only been the clinic and rounds at the main branch of New York Presbyterian Hospital. I learned about the value of community-based care seeing how quite a few patients prefer to stay closer to their place of residence where they are not bound by translation or language barriers. Many patients at the Chinatown location speak English as a second language, therefore, a real-time translation service is provided to patients over the phone. I have shadowed in different hospitals where their translation services occur over a tablet, which allows the patient to see the face and motions of the translator. The services provided at NYP Chinatown for translation are based over call, but it does help that many patients bring family members who can aid in the interpretation of medical information. I learned that there are tablets with translation services at the main hospital, but these are not available at off-site locations. In terms of my summer research project, we are still figuring out logistic details of obtaining or using patient-derived samples from perfused livers in accordance with existing IRB protocols. As my advisor is based at WCM, I will continue this summer immersion project over the course of my PhD.