She started her Ph.D. training at CTM last year, and as a second-year student, she is already assisting others with their research as a Scientific Methodology Supervisor. The projects she supervises are clinically relevant and methodologically accurate, and her students are making excellent progress. Boglárka Patócs was honored with the Excellent Staff Member Award by the Centre for Translational Medicine.
Dr. Patócs started participating in CTM’s training program this academic year as a Scientific Methodology Supervisor. She assists eight first-year students in the Pediatrics Group and the Gynecology-Urology Group. “I appreciated this opportunity because it allows me to become even more involved in research and gain even more experience in this field. I work on a wide variety of topics. For example, I have a student whose research focuses on benign and malignant kidney tumors. This is an incredibly exciting topic that involves the latest diagnostic and therapeutic methods. For example, there are new types of chemotherapy for kidney cancer, as well as diagnostic markers that can be used to assess risk before surgery. Among the gynecological topics, there is also one related to biomarkers.”
Dr. Patócs has one in-person meeting with her students each week, and she also holds one online discussion with them each week. “This means two meetings a week, but at the beginning of the academic year, we typically had more than that. This was necessary because right after the semester started, the students had many questions that we needed to discuss. We also communicate via email, and there are instances where students have reached out to me specifically before or after our in-person meetings. This will likely continue until the first progress report.”
Currently, Dr. Patócs’s attention is focused on her SMS assignments and her own research, so she has not yet begun her residency training. However, her long-term plan is to work as a pediatrician. In the Ph.D. program, her supervisor is Dr. Csaba Lódi, Head of the Intensive Care Unit at the Bókay Street Department, Pediatric Center, Semmelweis University. Dr. Patócs is conducting research with him on the safety and efficacy of thromboprophylaxis against catheter-related thrombosis in critically ill children. Thromboprophylaxis is an important topic because without it, approximately 1 in 10 children develops thrombosis in the cannulated vessel.
“This topic originated from Dr. Lódi, who was already my supervisor when I earned my university degree. At my thesis defense, the chair recommended that I pursue a Ph.D., and I immediately asked Dr. Lódi if he would be my advisor. He said yes and even suggested a topic he’d wanted to work on for years. There’s very little data on this issue in children, which made it difficult to conduct our meta-analysis. At the same time, that’s exactly what motivated me, because this topic is otherwise very important. My second project is also related to this topic, but in that one we’re not conducting a meta-analysis; instead, through our own clinical research, we aim to develop a method to make thromboprophylaxis against catheter-related thrombosis even more effective. This is important because while there are well-established practices for thromboprophylaxis in adults with cannulated vessels – and there are many protocols – the same cannot be said for children. Furthermore, the entire procedure is more complicated in children.”
(Emese Szabó)