Interning at Hennepin healthcare Research Institute
Access to Lung Cancer Screening
by Molly Adams
Introduction
In Fall 2019, I interned at Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI), assisting a psychiatrist (I’ll call them Dr. S) on their lung cancer screening study. As a psychiatrist specializing in smoking cessation, Dr. S is investigating access to lung cancer screening from both the patient and provider perspective (LCS). Initially, this research was intriguing to me as lung cancer is responsible for the largest percentage of cancer deaths, as it if often diagnosed at late stages (National Lung Cancer Screening Trial, 2011). As a research assistant in the early steps of the study, my job was twofold: contacting providers to enroll them in the study and updating the literature review. With supervision from the research coordinator, I also learned about informed consent, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process, and structured interviewing.
How I got involved:
I connected with Elena, a recent Macalester psychology graduate, through the psychology department. She had contacted them looking for any students interested in an unpaid internship on a research study at HHRI. After a successful interview with Dr. S, my advisor and I decided that this would be a great opportunity to complete an internship for credit. We worked with the Macalester Internship department to register the internship as an upper-level psychology class.
My role on the study:
In the initial stages of the study, I helped with participant recruitment. I reached out to both internal and family medicine providers to enroll them in our study. Once I obtained their contact information, they would be faxed or emailed a survey asking about their experiences with LCS. The final sample size was 500 providers. This was a great entry level experience for me. I learned different participant recruitment techniques and how difficult it can be to recruit a sufficient sample size. The provider recruitment was only half of the sample as this study was also concerned with patient experiences with LCS. Although I did not engage directly with these participants, I learned about LCS criteria for patients such as one's pack-years, age, and smoking history. The specific criteria can be seen in the image from Houston Methodist Lung Cancer Screening Program.
In addition to the provider list, I helped update the study's literature review. Dr. S and their team submitted an initial literature review with their study proposal a few years prior. Since then, numerous research papers have been published about methods of LCS and access to screening. This part of the internship was most challenging for me. As I was not familiar with the medical terms and intricacies in many of the LCS articles, I quickly "learned on the job." Ultimately, I honed my technical writing skills and gained important knowledge about the literature review revision process.
What I learned:
Through interning at HHRI, I gained invaluable knowledge about how the research process works “in the real world.” The Psychology department at Macalester does a great job at simulating what a research study will be like from start to finish; however, until I started interning at HHRI, I did not fully understand exactly what goes into launching and carrying out a study. The most useful thing I learned was that the IRB process is not stagnant and therefore the study is in constant “review.” Every time there was a change to the study (e.g., a new person joined the team or an edit was made to a survey) we would need to get IRB approval. This really highlighted how much communication is needed not only within the research team but with the research institute as well.
In addition to the IRB process, I also became more familiar with informed consent. Specifically, as our study was working with a diverse population, I learned about getting informed consent from people who did not speak English, who were illiterate, or who had elementary-level educational experiences. Obtaining truly informed consent from these more vulnerable populations is extremely important for ethical reasons and to ensure the representativeness of the research. While I did not engage in informed consent or IRB revisions myself, learning about these skills through training and watching my supervisors engage in these tasks enhanced my understanding of psychology and public health research.
References:
National Lung Screening Trial Research Team. (2011). The national lung screening trial: overview and study design. Radiology, 258(1), 243-253.
Molly Adams
Hi! My name is Molly Adams. I am a graduating senior at Macalester College studying Psychology and Community & Global Health. I grew up in Concord Massachusetts before coming out to Minnesota for college. While at Macalester, I played on the soccer team, volunteered in downtown Saint Paul, and studied abroad in Cape Town, South Africa. After graduating, I will be working as a research associate at RTI International- a non-profit research institute. I look forward to moving to D.C. and working on their neglected tropical disease team!