Week 5:
Breaking Ground on COVI-SWA

July 8, 2021

At the outset of week 5, we continued scoring the challenging NAPS or North American Prodromal Synucleinopathy Consortium files from McGill University sleep studies. Now that I have passed the Gold Standard, I can score these official, de-identified sleep studies from which data will be published in future RBD NAPS Consortium studies. I began drafting emails to several Mayo Clinic physicians, namely trauma surgeon Dr. Mariela Rivera, thoracic surgeon Dr. Shanda Blackmon, neurosurgeon Dr. Michelle J. Clarke, surgical gynecologic oncologist Dr. Jamie N. Bakkum-Gamez, and surgical oncologist Dr. Tina J. Hieken. While reading their Mayo Clinic surgical profiles, I was in awe that many of these surgeons have a multitude of roles outside of surgery and clinical practice, such as ongoing research, teaching at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, as well as pioneering surgical technology and methods in each of their specialties. All of these highly accomplished physicians described passions for patient-first care congruent with the Mayo Clinic mission statement. They created a welcoming atmosphere for prospective and current medical students under their guidance. I have already heard back from Dr. Mariela Rivera, who will be shadowing for rounds and general surgery on July 8th. She sounded so excited for shadowing to start back up again as it hasn’t been possible for the past year and a half due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Shortly after, I was also scheduled to shadow a thoracic surgeon, Dr. Shanda Blackmon, in a clinical setting three times throughout the month. To find the elevators I will take at 6:30 AM this coming Thursday to shadow Dr. Rivera, my fellow interns graciously took the 20-minute walk to Mayo Clinic Hospital, Saint Marys Campus with me over our lunch hour.

Jacob, Kevin, Olivia, and I pictured with a few of Saint Mary’s nuns.

By mid-week, all of us interns had passed the Gold Standard. We were approved to view the Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine patient data following HIPAA according to the cognitive neurophysiology lab IRB or Institutional Review Board. We were then introduced to navigating Epic, the major patient records database, to review participant clinical histories for approval to be included in our COVID-19 RBD project, termed COVI-SWA (COVID-19 and REM sleep without atonia) by scoring master Tyler. Next, we learned how to navigate Natus, the major clinical polysomnogram or PSG-viewing software that allows us to view muscle activity signals in much greater detail and prune studies to create the EDF files which we score in Hypnolab. Lastly, we learned how to make SCO files: the files with sleep staging and respiratory event markings from Natus that include the written aspects of PSGs. The remainder of the week was mainly spent creating SCO files for the recovered COVID-19 patient PSGs and the control patient PSGs to begin scoring their sleep studies this coming week and gather the preliminary COVI-SWA data. Dr. St Louis also reviewed our staging and scoring on the finished NAPS Consortium files before Scoring Master Tyler reviews our progress. We all agreed to push back Journal Club 4 until next week as we were learning many new skills simultaneously. Our journal article, a review of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying various sleep disorders, including RBD, deserved a few extra thorough reviews from all of us. Next week I look forward to shadowing Dr. Rivera, Dr. Blackmon and beginning to score the blinded PSGs to officially kick off the COVI-SWA project.

Dr. St Louis and his minions reviewing Olivia’s staging and scoring of a particularly challenging NAPS Consortium PSG