how to make the patch
As an EMT, I learn a lot from my geriatric patients, particularly, how difficult it is to take daily medications. YSAP is a program that grants $300 to pursue any research question. So, I pitched to my friends Endrit and Katharine that we work to change the way medicine gets taken. After research into different methods of medicine delivery, we realized that transdermal patches had the greatest ease of use.
My team agreed that I should do most of the research, as I understood medical terminology and did semi-regular reading of research articles with my chem club advisor, Dr. Sankar. However, this was a bad idea because when I explained how to make the patch, I realized that I was using the very words they didn’t understand. Understandably, Endrit, and Katherine were extremely confused. However, I foolishly thought that it would be fine because I was used to completing group projects on my own.
I headed over to the fume hood and began to melt poly-D Lactic Acid to use as my reservoir. Once it fully melted, I left to get the tweezers, and the amoxicillin that Endrit had been measuring out and line up the microneedle array on the parchment paper and when I turned back around all of the very expensive polymer had burned. I had ruined an entire trial’s worth of polymer because I had excluded my two other team members from the process. Thankfully I had very understanding friends, and we reworked the procedure that way Katharine could get me the supplies I needed while Endrit measured out future materials we might use.
Having Katharine there was a game-changer. I didn’t have to turn my back on what turned out to be a challenging material to heat, and I had someone to bounce ideas off of when the unexpected happened, like being unable to remove the polymer from the beaker once melted or when the amoxicillin would not dissolve.
Through the whole project, I learned that working with a team of people is about communicating effectively and including everyone on the team. Breaking off on your own might sound more effective or faster, but the loss of collaboration leads to way more mistakes and worse ideas. I never realized how much I didn’t know until I had a team to point it out to me, and thank goodness, I found one.