My name is Nataysia, and I am a fifth year MBChB student at the University of Edinburgh. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada where I was very involved in sports such as varsity volleyball and track and field as well as the arts, including piano and voice. I love the outdoors including skiing at Whistler as well as boating on Pacific Coast and scuba diving. I continue to play volleyball with the medic team and love to run a 5K around the campus and nearby Meadows. I am also an avid movie fan and am a member of the Fleshmarket Film Society here at University.
In 2019, eleven Canadian high school students were selected to participate in the A990 program which commenced with a BSc Med (Hons) from the University of St Andrews, followed three clinical years at University of Edinburgh and an intense 18 week placement at the University of Alberta (Canada). We will write both the UK qualifying exam and the Canadian MCCQE exam, which will result in reciprocal qualifications in the UK and Canada. I am absolutely fascinated by surgery and have taken every opportunity to spend time in theatre. I have been fortunate to be asked to scrub in on a variety of different procedures and I am very drawn to both cardiothoracic surgery and organ transplant surgery.
I had the opportunity to meet Professor Ewen Harrison in 2022 and we began to collaborate on a research paper related to multi-morbidity and perioperative care. Later, Professor Harrison asked me to be the RIE project lead for the Global Evaluation of Cholecystectomy Knowledge and Outcomes (GECKO) international cohort study.
As the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) lead for GECKO, I worked with Jingjing Wang, the president of the Surgical Society, to recruit and train 40 medical students to collect and collate data over eight two-week periods from RIE using the REDCap database. The project is going exceptionally well due to the hard work and dedication of the medical student collaborators. The great news is that as a result of their participation in GECKO, they will all be PubMed citable authors. Moreover, I was recently advised by Professor Harrison that RIE is currently ranked 4th out of 926 institutions participating in this international cohort study from around the world.
I first learned that I loved doing research when I was working on my dissertation at St Andrews. This was a surprising discovery for me but it has opened my eyes to the incredible opportunities that exist to participate in research at the University of Edinburgh. There are many different ways that one can participate in research including primary research, data collection, cohort studies, critical reviews, systematic reviews and more. These projects are fascinating and advance medical science. The projects also allow one to interact with senior medical faculty and practitioners who provide mentorship and career guidance.
Overall, my medical research projects, including GECKO, have been very inspiring and have allowed me to create a whole new avenue of study as well as to build a large network of like-minded peers.
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