He is a very active supervisor, and his students are making good progress. He also works with project students and is involved in disseminating and recruiting for the TDK program, while working at the clinic too. He has a lot of on-call duty and does a lot for patient care. Caner Turan was honored with the Excellent Supervisor Award by the Centre for Translational Medicine.
Dr. Turan is a third-year resident at the Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Semmelweis University, who earned his Ph.D. degree in 2024 with outstanding results within the CTM program. As a scientific methodology supervisor, he has long been assisting Ph.D. students, and he was delighted to begin serving as a supervisor this academic year. He has three students: Mohammed Elshafie, Patricia Schneidereit, and Yusif Ismayilov.
“I supervise my students jointly with Prof. Zsolt Molnár. Mohammed and Yusif are sixth-year medical students who would like to begin their residency this September. We would be delighted if they chose to do so here in Hungary, at our clinic. Patricia is a second-year medical student and she already has a degree in clinical psychology. She worked as a psychologist at the emergency department, and has just started working in intensive care. It is not surprising that all three of our students’ research topics are related to intensive care.”
Mohammed is looking into the safety and effectiveness of sodium bicarbonate supplementation in critically ill patients with severe metabolic acidosis, which is a very important topic. “There is no international consensus on its administration, so practices vary from clinic to clinic. For this reason, it is important to determine whether sodium bicarbonate supplementation offers any benefits in terms of patient outcomes – for example, whether it can help avoiding the need for renal replacement therapy. Yusuf’s topic is also intriguing. He is investigating the effect of frailty scores on intensive care unit mortality in critically ill adults. He aims to clarify who truly benefits from admission to an intensive care unit. This is important because patients who are unlikely to benefit from intensive care should instead be referred to palliative care.”
Patricia’s research topic is also of great importance. She is investigating the effectiveness of neuromuscular modulation in mechanically ventilated patients in critical care. “Through her research, we are trying to determine whether electrical stimulation is really effective during mechanical ventilation and whether there are differences between the various techniques. Patricia’s manuscript is nearly complete: she already has results showing that electrical stimulation is highly effective and that there are no significant differences between the various techniques. For this reason, intensive care units need to have an electrical stimulator and a physical therapist who knows how to use it.”
As the TDK coordinator of the Centre, Dr. Turan also works with TDK students. “We currently have 180–190 TDK students working with us as project students. Coordinating their work is not easy, but I enjoy this job. I also teach a graduate-level course that introduces students to clinical research. Each semester, we also hold a workshop for students at Semmelweis University, which is another way we aim to spark interest in clinical research.” Due to his wide range of responsibilities, Dr. Turan works 12–14 hours a day and tries to manage his time as effectively as possible. He shares his time-management techniques with students and supervisors at CTM’s time-management course, as he believes everyone can benefit from them.
(Emese Szabó)