During the Young Stroke Physicians and Researchers (YSPR) session at ESO-WSO 2020 virtual conference, four early career stroke physicians and researchers will present their planned or ongoing projects and receive feedback from two renowned stroke experts.
The session was held on Saturday November 7th at 09.45 in Hall C and can be viewed as a webcast by all registeres participants.
In these series of interviews, we are going to meet them and hear about their story.
Today we are meeting with Yu Zhou.
Yu is a neurosurgeon from China and he is going to present “Coordinated patient care via mobilephone based tele-medicine to improve medication persistence and stroke awareness in adult stroke patients: a randomized trial”. Please stay tuned!
Something about myself
I am Yu Zhou, associated professor of Department of Neurosurgeon of Changhai hospital, Shanghai, China. I have graduated from medical school for 10 years. And after graduation, I have been in this hospital and devoted myself into endovascular treatment of cerebrovascular diseases. As a Neurosurgeon, I want myself to be a clinical investor so that I will be able to provide more knowledge about the diseases we care about, as well as treat my patients with proficient surgical skills.
How did you get involved in stroke research?
Actually, I have begun in stroke research after graduation. At the beginning, we summarized some tips and tricks during operation, and then slowly we began some prospective trials to answer the question raised in clinic.
Why did you choose this topic?
As a doctor specialized in cerebrovascular diseases, I have seen many stroke or recurrent stroke owing to discontinuation of anti-thrombotic drugs, and the discontinuation of other drugs are even more common. Despite we try our best to tell the patients the importance of drug administration, the situation persisted. So we tried to adopt a new method to improve patient education and drug adherence.
What have been the most difficult challenges regarding your research career so far?
The most difficult time happened when I was conducting studies and experiment on aneurysm formation. I have spent years on that, but the results were null. And it was quite frustrating.
How do you balance work life and free time/home life?
As a Neurosurgeon, it is difficult to balance work and home life. The work hours are long, we always have to work late in the operation day, and we always have additional work to do, such as preparing for the lecture, analyzing data, writing/revising articles, at night and weekends. I try my best to spare my time on Saturday, and to share that time with my family. I also want to know how other professors manage their time between work and home life, and I would like to learn from their experience.
What do you think a mentor should do to support the projects and the career of a mentee and, conversely, what should a mentee expect from a mentor?
The mentors are great, they may help optimize the project protocol, and provide important advice on how to implement the trial with high quality. But I want the support would not limited to this single project. There may be many ideas can be shared, and many projects may be cooperated. Just like our previous trial-Direct MT, which was successfully implemented under the instruction of the MR Clean Team.
