by Mimi Zander
I feel accomplished. My summer in Philadelphia has been full of learning, team building, reflection, and of course alarm review. As I get ready to head into second year, all I can manage to do is make lists. This post is no exception. Without further ado, in no particular order, this summer I’ve accomplished the following:
Wrote a protocol
It’s taken all summer, but I’ve written a protocol on the epidemiology of alarms in our hospital’s PICU. It’s surprising that after almost three years working in research, it’s taken this long. I’ve read protocols, certainly. I’ve revised and meticulously followed them on many occasions, but I haven’t drafted one from scratch, not until now at least. I will carry this project into my second year, participate in calls, make my way over to Philadelphia for meetings, and hopefully by winter break I will start drafting a manuscript for publication. I’m particularly excited about taking ownership over an entire project from start to finish and staying involved as I head into second year.
Co-wrote and helped submit a systematic review
I have the deepest appreciation for investigators and their teams who write systematic reviews. It is incredibly detailed work that forces you to become an expert in a particular subject. After many abstract reviews, consensus rounds, revisions, charts and diagrams, I am happy to report that our systematic review on alarm fatigue has been submitted and is out of our hands (for now).
Reviewed 3,000+ alarms
Boy, do I feel that alarm fatigue! I’ve already discussed in a previous post how it is both empowering and tedious to review so much video. We have devoted quite a bit of time this summer to streamlining our work flow in order to evaluate the maximum number of alarms in a reasonable amount of time. Hopefully the research process improvements we’ve made will make the next 7,500 or so alarms more manageable for the team.
Learned some STATA code
I dabbled with STATA for the first time, learning some basic functionality. I spent some time with a well written manual and sample data sets. I certainly hope to build on these skills this fall as we start digging into data for the epidemiology of alarms study.
Shadowed a hospitalist
While The Hospital Leader does a great job describing the role of a hospitalist, there’s nothing quite like firsthand experience. It was both exciting and eye opening to see how multidisciplinary pediatric hospital medicine is. I look forward to learning more when I embark on rotations in a year!
This has been an overwhelmingly rewarding summer and I can’t wait to use all that I’ve learned to enhance future projects in the years to come.
I would like to thank Dr. Christopher P. Bonafide for hosting me this summer at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and for being a wonderful mentor. I look forward to more collaboration! Last, but not least, thanks to my stellar office mates and co-collaborators Shannon Stemler and Matt MacMurchy – have fun with the next 7,500 alarms, let me know how it goes!
Mimi Zander is a second year medical student at the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in Harlem, New York City. She is one of three medical students to receive SHM’s Student Hospitalist Scholar Grant with which she is completing scholarly work related to patient safety in the hospital. Mimi received her B.A. from Rutgers University in 2011 with a concentration in English, and she completed her post baccalaureate studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
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