Jayma Girdler - Internship

Dr. Kurtz-Nelson is studying Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children and is focused on finding a more effective way to review the results from various testing procedures and finding one that is the most effective for various research projects. My part in the internship to help her and the rest of her team with inputting the data collected from their tests into a digital platform for easier access when analyzing the data. This part of the internship is crucial as it helps everyone on the team. I am in charge of entering all of our digital data protocols, such as Vineland and DAS-II, which are used to measure the behaviors of patients with ASD.

As a team member, my current strengths are being used to help my team get ahead on entering data into our database RedCap. Learning more about the data allowed me to build more of an understanding of what the team is focusing their research on, and this allowed me to choose a topic I wanted to research further using the data entered. As a professional, I wanted to not only grow my understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), but to learn more about clinical research and the process of using the entered data.

Being put behind the process of entering the testing data allowed me to help the research team as they continue to learn more about ASD. My role is important as I was able to compile large amounts of data into a singular database that will help with future research.

I have learned over the course of my internship that every role in a team is important. If you didn't have someone doing one role, then the other roles will be behind on their work. I learned that being a part of the creation of the database is a major part of the future of the research endeavours by the rest of the team.

Successes and challenges always come with starting a new role. These can be treated as ways to improve your work going forward. I started this role not knowing a lot about ASD, my role as an intern, and how I will be helping the rest of the staff. Going through my year at this site, I was able to learn more about not only my work but more about what I want to do following graduation. For starters, I was able to advocate for more training to learn more about the protocols that clinicians used to test patients for ASD. This allowed me to gain a better understanding of the protocols as I entered the results from the tests. Knowing this information showed me that there is a lot more to the protocols as each test can be used in different research stances. For example, the BASC-3 test can be used to measure anxiety levels, and the STAT test can be used to look at interactions and behaviors. This knowledge allowed me to pick the right test to use for my showcase presentation. Even though I was able to enter a variety of tests, I encountered many issues where I was unable to enter some protocols. This is due to RedCap not having the fields or the protocols available on some patients. To overcome this, I communicated with my supervisor and was able to switch between paper and digital protocols for my data entry. Overall, I learned a lot at my internship site in LHSI. I was able to help the rest of the staff by entering a lot of data that can be used for data testing, and I was able to learn more about ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders that may impact the learning or communcating of an individual. This experience taught me a lot.