@dresmerelda

ID/Micro Academic Doctor & Smiley-faced lover of purple

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Category: Healthy Living

Recovery

Time (or in reality ‘Me’) Management

November 27, 2017November 27, 2017Leave a comment

I'm pleased to say that I've managed to achieve a fair bit so far in my career while being utterly useless at time. How? Read on...

Rejection and the ‘Science’ of Recovery

August 1, 2017August 1, 2017Leave a comment

Thinking positively isn't always that easy. Here I discuss how I learnt self confidence and coping strategies for a healthier mind.

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Posters are a good way of bolstering your CV and making the most of going to conferences. The general format tends to be squares and text. I’m a big fan of making posters readable and attention grabbing- science IS fun after all! My poster was about viral infections so I decided to use a flu virus as the basis of my poster 🦠 • Do you have any tips for good conference posters? Share below 👇 • #fis19 #posterpresentation #research #academiclife #purplehair #dresmerelda #edinburgh #travelforwork #presentationskills #virology #flu #phdlife #viruses #doctorslife #medic #medstudent #nursing #pa #womeninstem #respiratory #workstyle #conference #cv #instascience #science #winteriscoming

I’m off again! This time to a conference in Scotland organised by the Microbiology Society. It’s a big Infectious Diseases and Microbiology conference and I’m looking forward to learning and catching up with former colleagues. Expect the obligatory poster photo 😁 • #microbiology #infectiousdisease #doctorsofinstagram #inthelab #lifelonglearning #alwayslearning #conference #academic #medstudent #posterdesign #inthelab #gramstain #womeninmedicine #medic #clinical #nursing #pa #science #scienceart #purple #colour #microbiologia #clinicalmicrobiology #microbiologist #studygram #instamed #instascience #pretty #microbiosoc #FIS19

“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion.” - Simon Sinek 💪 • #lovemyjob #careergoals #researcher #medicaldoctor #doctordoctor #globalhealth #medicine #dresmerelda #traveltheworld #purplehair #friyay #lifegoals #womeninmedicine #womeninstem #ladyboss #acmedsci #stemlife #phdlife #infectiousdisease #microbiology #microbelove #medstudent #studygram #beyourownhero #passionforlife #fashionfun #nurses #pa #science #success

This time 6 weeks ago I was in India and now I’m off to Nepal! 🙌 • Before I left for India I was reading about an amazing lady called Ida Scudder. Born in the late 1800s to a line of missionary medics, she never wanted to be a doctor. Her main plan was to get married and have children. Until one day, while she was visiting her parents back in India, she watched in horror as several women died in childbirth, unwilling to have male medics attend to them. Ida was so appalled that there were no women doctors to help these women that she worked to become one herself, before dedicating her life to India and her women- she set up a college principally to educate local female doctors, set up local practices to treat women, battled against local diseases such as plague, cholera and leprosy and set up a hospital that still stands today as one of the best in India if not the continent. 🥰 • If that isn’t something to give me imposter syndrome, I don’t know what is 😅 But what a hero to aspire to, eh? ❤️ • #womenempowerment #womensupportingwomen #femaleentrepreneur #medicalheroes #doctorsofinstagram #history #scientist #traveltheworld #globalmindset #healtheworld #ladyboss #wanderer #jetsetter #obstetrics #maternity #maternalhealth #infectiousdisease #loveindia #lovenepal #womeninmedicine #travelgram #nursing #phdlife #dresmerelda #passion #getoutside #workabroad #communityhealth

Hallo! Thought I’d re-introduce myself to old and new followers alike, not least because I’m sure many must wonder what it is I do! 😅 • I’m Farah and I’m a medical doctor in the UK specialising in Infection (Infectious Disease and Microbiology). I had the opportunity to do research alongside my clinical training through the NIHR and did a project looking at the gut microbiome and antibiotic effects on it and breath. I LOVE my clinical (and teach life support skills too) but I like to apply my research for patients and academic medicine can do the best of both. So I’ve suspended my clinical training while starting a job as a Clinical Research Fellow- we’re aiming to create a rapid diagnostic test for people with fevers in low resource/tropical countries. Which means I now also get to jet set and travel (sounds cool but is more tiring than glamorous- not complaining though 😅😅). I’m doing a PhD too and will still be doing some clinical, probably by locuming and exams I need to do. 🙂 • I totally love my job and the NHS. I get SO much variety. I try to show this through this page, all centring on Infection and why I love it/ how it shapes history and today. 🥰 • Any other clinicians in academia out there? Anyone wondering about mixing up your medical career a bit? I can write a blog post about this if anyone has any questions- let me know in the comments 🤪👇 • #clinician #blog #medical #doctorslife #doctorsofinstagram #nhs #lovemyjob #researcher #academics #academiclife #workstyleinspiration #vintagestyle #purple #labcoat #inthelab #medstudent #medicalcareers #saveournhs #womeninmedicine #womeninstem #stemgirl #science #phdlife #alwayslearning #womenempoweringwomen #mixitup #youcan #infection #livelife #wanderlust

Interesting pub chat with colleagues tonight (yes, that’s what happens when you’re surrounded with enthusiastic specialists 😂) about chronic carriage of Typhoid ☺️ • Can anyone name the most famous case of chronic Typhoid infection pictured in the next two pics? And tell me something about them? 👇 • Answers in stories and credit to the featured artist later this week on the post too (thanks to them and their amazing work) 🙌 • #typhoid #infection #academics #doctorslife #researchlife #infection #artandscience #artistsofinstagram #microbiologia #microbiologiaclinica #medstudents #dresmerelda #phdstudent #scicommoninstagram #science #agarplates #inthelab #lovemyjob #clinspiration #patients #phdpub #pubs #history #alwayslearning #antibioticresistance #publichealth #prettycolours #teachertuesday #enthusiasmgoesalongway

Presenting is a big part of research, and often of working-life generally. I learnt from winning the 3-minute research prize that unfortunately you CAN make people switch off quickly, even from an interesting project (at that point, I hadn’t even done any research yet and I won, probably for enthusiasm!!) 🙈 • So, tips: 👇 1️⃣ BE enthusiastic! If you’re bored by your project, everyone else will be too 🤦🏻‍♀️ 2️⃣ Use pictures, not words- no one, especially not you, should be reading your slide 🤓 3️⃣ Project and engage your audience- look around the room when you’re talking, gesture, and invite interest. There’s nothing worse than being an audience member and watching someone’s back 🗣 4️⃣ Use a bit of humour- of course, it depends on your topic, but where possible, add a bit of humour to keep the audience focused 😄 5️⃣ Don’t worry about making mistakes/going a little off-script so long as you keep to time. Know which slide you should be on at which point in time, but don’t recite ‘lines’ unless you’ve managed to retain fluidity in your speech 🤪 • In that spirit, swipe to see a carefree ugly scrunchy face I made while talking 😂 That’s insta-perfect in my book 🤪😄 • #presentingskills #presentation #infection #microbiology #researcher #womeninmedicine #publicspeaking #instaperfect #instascience #doctorsofinstagram #clinician #medschool #phdlife #academiclife #dresmerelda #workstyle #purplehair #womeninscience #workdress #lovemyjob #nurse #palife #happydoctors #diagnosis #worldtravel #womeninstem #ladyboss #presentationtips #studytips

It was a hot morning in Secunderabad, India, when Ronald Ross came to work after a sleepless night, praying that his subject would still be alive. 🤞 • For two painstaking years he had grown, fed and dissected the “brindled and grey type” of mosquito, hoping to prove his mentor Manson’s theory that “mosquitoes carry malaria just as they carry filaria.” He’d discovered six new mosquito parasites, been deployed to various parts of India with the military, written countless poems and received innumerable pep-talks by letter from Manson. Cooped up in his stuffy little hospital office, fan off to avoid blowing away his fragile work, he remembered the illness that struck down his father when Ross was a child, that ravaged millions in the ‘British Empire,’ that he’d treated a multitude of patients for, and that promised him fame if he could just find the proof… 🦟 • Today was different. It was the 21st August 1897. Five days earlier, he’d hatched a “dappled-wing” mosquito. They were larger and brown, with eggs “shaped curiously like ancient boats with raised stern and prow” but he’d not expected to need to find more. He placed 8 of them under a netted bed in which lay Husein Khan, a man known to have “fair to a few” crescents in his blood (malaria). The first 4 mosquitoes were killed immediately for other, related purposes. He killed a further 3 a few days later, 2 of which were unremarkable. On the 20th August 1897, something in that 7th mosquito caught his eye. As he raised his mosquito-bitten arm to his face, placing his eye to his rusty, cracked microscope, he found something that only a man that has looked at thousands of dead mosquitoes would spot- unusual cells in the mosquito’s stomach, scattered with the coal-black granules of malarial pigment. Today, the 21st August, was to prove his theory correct- that by day 5 the parasite would have continued to grow and yesterday truly had been Mosquito Day! His and Grassi’s efforts led to our understanding of this killer disease. Fast-forward to today’s world and in the coming weeks, I go to a lecture by a Professor testing a malaria vaccine. Watch this space… 🙌 • References in comments 👇

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