The Research Mentor and Mentee Relationship at VTCSOM

I took a lot of my inspiration from my own grandfather who I can remember taking BC powders multiple times a day. I even went to one of his doctor's appointment one time and the doctor asked, are you taking any over the counter medications? And he said, Oh, no, I'm not taking anything. Non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs can be very helpful medications, but may also have harmful side effects. Matthew was interested in understanding what could influence patient behavior around over the counter NSAID use. That's a great question. When we look at the medication my project was looking at ways that we could very quickly and efficiently address this issue where we were educating the population on some of the harmful and potential side effects of over the counter NSAIDs. We developed a video to educate but also to motivate this population to decrease their use Patients said things to us like I had no idea that this was a high risk medication, or I take 20 or 30 Advil tablets a day for whatever type of pain. In Matthews study, we observed that the simple intervention reduced high risk NSAID use by ten days per month. A lot, a very big behavior change difference with a very small intervention. Thank you so much, for your help. Matthew really wanted to do an intervention that really impacted real people. I think his commitment in that respect was really thoughtful. He really wanted to do something that had a good impact. In our profession, we have a blessing to be able to educate and treat and serve our communities. But more than anything, I really want our patient population to feel empowered to care for themselves. Working with my two mentors was phenomenal. They really took an interest in us personally, not only wanting to see my research succeed, but wanting to see my career succeed. It's very fun to be able to work with John on research projects exactly like Matthew's because it plays to our strengths. Him as a clinician and with lots of experience with evidence based medicine, combined with my experience as a health services researcher, really paired well for a study like Matthews. I think we have a great model for research collaboration between doctor Rockwell and myself. Deputies and PhDs can and should work together to advance the research mission. We are lucky to have stumbled upon each other, I think, to work together and produce the research that we do. They go above and beyond every step of the way trying to make sure that we learn the skills that we would like to learn. He put in the work. He really worked really hard in making this a successful project. So it was really a pleasure to watch and work on with them. They absolutely deserve to be research mentors of the year. There's no way I would have been able to do this project without them.