Week 1

My first week of immersion was very interesting!  I have never lived in a big city before but so far the adjustment to living here has been easier than I expected.  I have enjoyed walking around and exploring this city during my free time.
My clinical mentor is Dr. Bostrom at HSS who was traveling this week.  While I was unable to start working directly with Dr. Bostrom this week, I was able to get acquainted with a lot of the biomechanics research and research facilities at HSS.  I spent some time with Dr. Maher, a research scientist at HSS.  She was great in getting me introduced to all of the interesting research done at HSS.  Her work specifically is focussed on developing a better understanding of joint mechanics, modeling joints for improved implants, and implantable biomaterials for joint repair.  I also met with some of the researchers in Dr. Bostrom's lab and learned about their various projects.  I was able to watch some mechanical testing which involved pulling joint implants out of mouse tibia among other experiments.  Finally, I was able to attend a wide range of lab and clinical meetings including the HSS biomechanics research meeting, the tissue engineering research meeting, the clinical based arthroplasty meeting and a guest speaker on implant joint mechanics.  All these meetings were very interesting and exposed me to a range of new research being performed here at HSS.  Next week I am looking forward to meeting Dr. Bostrom and hopefully getting started into some clinical and surgical observation.