In Biology, I have grown in my ability to learn and understand new content.

 One project that supported my growth is the Genetic Disease Simulated Patient/Genetic Counseling Project. The purpose of this project/assignment was of the project was to take on the role of a resident physician at DRSS Medical Center and to diagnose a simulated patient. We wanted to answer two questions during this project. How can we diagnose a genetic disease? How can we provide genetic counseling for a simulated patient who might carry the disease?

In order to complete this project, we split it into two parts Simulating our Patient and Genetic Counseling. The first part was diagnosing the patient. So we had to receive a simulated patient history and physical report. Once we got that we looked over it, and read all that was there to make sure we knew everything about our patient. Then it was time to diagnose the patient. We did this by going to a website given to us by Mrs. Whitt and had to pick one disease out of like 10 to diagnose our patient with. On that website we looked at the symptoms to see if they matched our patient symptoms. The disease we diagnosed our patient with was Huntington disease. After the diagnosis we created a diagnostic report for our patient.

The second part was the most important part. We first devolved an interview plan for our genetic counseling session. We did this by coming up with question for our interview so we could get as much information as we possibly could. All the Patient wanted know was will their future kid get this disease? Then it was time for the interview. The interview was really important. It gave us all the information we needed for the rest of the project. Some of the questions that were asked were what genetic question would you like us to answer? What's your medical history? Did any of your relatives have this disease? After that we created Genetic Counseling Report, which was based on our patient's family. At the end of the project, we had to give a full interview or a talk with our patient explaining to them whether or not their future kid would have Huntington disease.  This was where all the work paid off. We had to know everything we completed in order to tell them if their child will get the disease.

 One artifact or piece of evidence from this project is the Genetic Disease Simulated Patient/Genetic Counseling Packet. In this packet we put all the information that was talked about in the previous paragraph. It was the outline of our project.

 

Another unit that supports my growth is the KF unit in our Biology Binder. This unit was about a mother who had been fighting for her kids with Social Services because her DNA did not match her child’s DNA. This was a real case and was brought to court. The court thought that she lied about being the mother of her own child. KF was tested for her DNA and there was no match. KF was certain there must have been a mistake. They thought she was acting as a paid surrogate mother and committing welfare fraud. She knew they were her kids. She showed them pictures and birth certificates but that didn’t matter because DNA tests were considered the gold standard in court. After all different lab test she still didn’t match. We had to help solve the case.

One artifact to prove my growth is Activity 2 in our binders. In this activity we had to RAHA a reading about the structure of DNA. This helped a lot in the KF case because we got a better understanding about DNA which helped to figure out what happened.