My LHSI Internship ('21-'22)

ObstETRICs and Gynecology 

At this internship site, I am working with Dr. Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds and Mrs. Shelley Hoffman to research decision making and ethical considerations surrounding periviable delivery. Periviable delivery occurs when a baby is born between 22 0/7 weeks and 25 6/7 weeks gestational age. During this window, families must decide whether to resuscitate their neonate with intensive care or do palliative care/comfort care measures until the neonate passes. At this site, we are conducting various research studies to overall help families make informed decisions based on their values, preferences and goals to mitigate decisional conflict and long-term negative mental health outcomes. 

THE RESEARCH STUDIES

MAD STUDY

My main focus has been on the MAD study, which stands for Making A Difference (MAD) Periviable Ethical Considerations. The Making A Difference study is funded by the Greenwall Foundation. As an undergraduate research assistant, I have been lucky to conduct qualitative interviews. I conducted ~8 interviews with obstetric and neonatology providers and am now beginning to interview parents who have experienced periviable delivery. It has been incredibly eye-opening to interact with these groups of people and learn their perspectives on what they believe should influence a family's decision for a newborn. 

PERIVIABLE GOALS

GOALS stands for Getting Optimal Alignment around Life Support decisions around periviable delivery. This study is funded with a R01 grant by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. My primary role in this research study was transcribing audio interviews and uploading the data into a REDCap database.

Learning and Skills 

This internship will improve my skills by pushing me to communicate with others on a research study. I already have research skills from my experiences of making my experiments and research papers from the International Baccalaureate program, so joining a large-scale study will improve my research skills.  

I'm pretty excited about being an active part of the ongoing research studies! My supervisors said they don't typically allow undergraduate students to conduct interviews, but I get to interview physicians for the research study and be a data manager for another survey. I'm learning how to be an active person who plays an active role, so I'm working hard to voice my opinions and chiming in with ideas that may help things flow easier. I'm also getting a lot of excellent experience in the database, IU REDCap, which I'm sure I'll see more of in the future. 

I'm more confident with navigating around the office. I used to be super nervous and shy whenever interacting with people in the HITS building, but now I feel more confident! That helps me with my other goals of networking and communicating. I still want to work on getting out of my shell a bit more, but I'm getting there! I would still like to work on my database skills; this is a new field that I'm not used to, the qualitative side of science. Once I get used to the database, it'll be an advantageous skill in the future and will help me be more independent and not bother any supervisors about my questions in REDCap. 

It's so nice to sit in on their research study meetings and effectively communicate their thought processes and opinions about their research. 

This internship fits into what I am learning in class because of my chemistry courses. I realize a lot about chemicals in chemistry, but here, I learn about their applications. For example, I know a lot about the chemical properties of magnesium, but I've learned that women can ingest magnesium to help further develop the baby and inhibit pregnancy complications. Also, in my chemistry lab, I now know how to understand qualitative data more, particularly with my formal reports. I learn to verbalize what I observe scientifically correctly at this internship site. 

I have learned so much about qualitative science and research while at the internship site. My biggest two tasks so far were conducting interviews and transcribing data. There are three participant groups for our research studies: people who have experienced periviable delivery, healthy pregnant people in the periviable window, and providers. I conducted ~8 interviews with providers in the fall semester and will end the school year by interviewing healthy pregnant people in the periviable window and experienced families. So far this spring semester, I have interviewed two partners who have experienced periviable delivery and 4 first-time parents.

This opportunity excited me and made me proud because the task pushed me out of my comfort zone. I had to be willing to communicate the study's goals and properly interview them, more importantly, be personable and empathetic with them. Periviable delivery is an excruciating process to go through, both emotionally and physically. 

It's an experience that stays with the families and their providers. Therefore, I needed to connect with them and make them comfortable enough to be vulnerable and share their stories with me. As a result of these in-depth interviews, I improved my communications skills in ways that I would have never predicted. I'm interacting with different people: researchers, doctors, parents, etc. Through this experience, I am learning different ways to speak with people and their perspectives. I would love to continue improving my communication skills. The world is full of constantly evolving people, and I want to communicate and share ideas with them in the best way possible. Another task I have enjoyed is transcribing data. Although I wasn't present during the interviews with the families currently going through their deliveries, I can still listen to their audio recordings and transcribe what they say. It's exciting to be so involved in hearing the stories, collecting the data, and learning how my internship site positively affects their lives and decision-making.  

Successes and Challenges

A drawing of an interview taking place. I got this image from Google search, the link is: https://www.plum.io/hubfs/structured%20interview@2x.png

Successes

My mini success was figuring out how to use IU REDCap! Every time I thought I knew how to use the database, I got even more confused. However, the day I was given a task to upload a ton of data onto REDCap by myself, I did it!  That is a mini victory that I am proud of, haha! 


Another success was helping the team complete 30 provider interviews. There were not many people available to conduct the provider interviews, and Mrs. Hoffman entrusted me as an intern to learn how to conduct them appropriately. It wasn't easy to learn how to do at first, but I eventually got the hang of it and conducted quite a few by myself. It's something that I never thought that I could excel at, but I am more detail-oriented than I thought! It was also highly encouraging because they said I did a great job and wished me luck on my medical journey towards the end of almost all of my MD interviews. 

Challenges

Dr. Tucker Edmonds shared this video with all her research assistants, and Mrs. Hoffman passed it along to me. Although we all feel sympathy towards others who have been through unfortunate situations, it is a complex and significant difference to express empathy towards another person. As a pretty introverted person, I felt highly vulnerable when conducting the interviews because it was challenging to make that personable connection. However, with encouragement from Mrs. Hoffman and practice, I feel confident about being empathetic towards others! 


Feel free to watch the embedded YouTube video that helped me!

The Workplace 

This is the IUPUI Health Information and Translational (HITS) building. It's where all the magic happens!

After observing professionals in the workplace this school year, I hope to have at least half of the sanity of Mrs. Hoffman and Dr. Tucker Edmonds! Their workloads are very demanding, and everything on their to-do list appears to be a priority. Their email inboxes could drive anyone crazy! Therefore, as a professional, I hope to manage a workload like them with ease and manage my time even more effectively. I love the workplace because I learn something new every day. Growing into a professional, I hope learning will be enjoyable rather than a burden. Going into the workplace with them is fun, so I want all of my future workplaces to be just as enjoyable. 

I am surprised about the day-to-day life at the office because I thought I would have a more passive role on the team and complete various tasks. However, it's been the opposite! I feel like an integral member of the team who contributes a lot. Attending meetings, receiving updates on the research studies, and meeting participants have been eye-opening experiences. I can view so many perspectives concerning periviable delivery through these research studies. I take the positive as a research assistant to speak with providers, healthy families, experienced families, and other members on the team and learn where everyone overlaps or disagrees. 

The workplace culture is very comforting. That may be an odd way to describe it, but I feel welcomed at my internship site. There are high expectations, but I have never felt as though I was under insurmountable pressure and stress. My supervisors are incredibly kind and find ways for us to have outings outside of work despite their busy schedules. I can always ask questions and learn something new, which I love. Something that surprised me when I became an intern was being asked, "what do you want to learn?". It may seem strange to be amazed at that question, but I do not think I have ever been asked what I wanted to learn in my past experiences. In this workplace culture, I feel seen and appreciated. Not only that, but I do a ton of independent work that contributes to a team. I love working independently and wanted to get more experience with teamwork, so I feel like this internship helps me gain exposure to that. With all that being said, this internship site is ideal workplace culture.