This week on White Coat Wednesday, we meet Taylor Ogden, who is interviewed by fellow UQ-Ochsner fourth-year medical student Kali Juracek. Originally from San Antonio Texas, Taylor completed her undergraduate degree at University of Southern California. From a very young age, she knew she wanted to help people in a meaningful way and medicine was just the way for her to do it.
When asked why she chose the UQ-Ochsner MD program, Taylor explains it was for the unique experience it offers to study in a different country, discover a different system of medicine and go on an amazing overseas adventure while getting a great education.
Taylor was recently announced as one of the seven 2024 Ochsner post-doctoral research fellowship recipients. Although she didn’t initially consider herself as someone interested in research, she came across a clinical question that triggered her interest and got her motivated to pursue this route. The fellowship is awarded to 5-7 UQ-Ochsner graduates each year, and is an opportunity to do a project with a physician investigator at Ochsner Health during the time between graduation in November and residency starting in July. Taylor shares more details on her project with her mentor Dr Dodd Denton, which focuses on the characterization of the female population living with HIV in the Ochsner Health system and the potential of increased use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to reduce infections. The project will be presented next April during Research Week which is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the hard work of the fellowship recipients.
“Training across two countries, at two really amazing institutions has given me a lot of resources and skills to go forward into residency, be confident in conducting research, hopefully be a great resident and clinician in the future,” said Taylor, reflecting back on the last four years in medical school.
Focusing on the next steps, Taylor is applying for residency in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and looking forward to the next six months of active research work.
