TRENTINI: Alright, so part of residency is academics, so every Tuesday morning we have a conference where all the residents get together, military and civilian. The first thing on the agenda — there’s always an oral boards case.  In that situation, one resident’s called up in front to sit with one of the board examiners, and they go through an oral board case in front of the entire residency program.  So it’s a little nervewracking. After that we’ll have some simulation sessions to go through, so busy day today.

The simulation center is about as close as you can get to a real-life patient encounter. All the residents go through multiple sims throughout their career, and you can do — almost everything that you can do on a real patient, you can do in the simulation center. The experiments that we conduct in the lab downstairs are slice culture experiments. And so what we can do then is change the environment to simulate a stroke. This is the brain slice, again, that’s cut like a piece of pepperoni, lying flat on the grate, and what we’re interested in studying is this part of the brain, which is the cerebral cortex, which is the outside of the brain, which in humans is all the sulci and gyri, all the gray matter of the brain, OK? We’re interested in studying these cells and how these cells respond to an acute stroke, and if our nanoparticle treatment can prevent the damage caused by an acute stroke.

I was awarded an ROTC scholarship, which paid for college, and then in return I owed four years of active-duty service to the Air Force. So that’s when I decided to go to USUHS where — it’s a military medical school. There I did my medical degree and also did my Ph.D. degree, and it was entirely funded by the Military. And then after medical school you choose a residency, and so emergency medicine for me fit in perfectly. When I’m done, I’ll go back to an active-duty job using all the knowledge and all the experiences that I’ve built along the way to really serve my country better. 

TRENTINI: Alright, so part of residency is academics, so every Tuesday morning we have a conference where all the residents get together, military and civilian. The first thing on the agenda — there’s always an oral boards case.  In that situation, one resident’s called up in front to sit with one of the board examiners, and they go through an oral board case in front of the entire residency program.  So it’s a little nervewracking. After that we’ll have some simulation sessions to go through, so busy day today.

The simulation center is about as close as you can get to a real-life patient encounter. All the residents go through multiple sims throughout their career, and you can do — almost everything that you can do on a real patient, you can do in the simulation center. The experiments that we conduct in the lab downstairs are slice culture experiments. And so what we can do then is change the environment to simulate a stroke. This is the brain slice, again, that’s cut like a piece of pepperoni, lying flat on the grate, and what we’re interested in studying is this part of the brain, which is the cerebral cortex, which is the outside of the brain, which in humans is all the sulci and gyri, all the gray matter of the brain, OK? We’re interested in studying these cells and how these cells respond to an acute stroke, and if our nanoparticle treatment can prevent the damage caused by an acute stroke.

I was awarded an ROTC scholarship, which paid for college, and then in return I owed four years of active-duty service to the Air Force. So that’s when I decided to go to USUHS where — it’s a military medical school. There I did my medical degree and also did my Ph.D. degree, and it was entirely funded by the Military. And then after medical school you choose a residency, and so emergency medicine for me fit in perfectly. When I’m done, I’ll go back to an active-duty job using all the knowledge and all the experiences that I’ve built along the way to really serve my country better.