Week 9, Into the Routine

Week 9 was spent almost entirely in the field. Each day after school I headed to Maimonides, walking the ED from around 1:00–2:00 PM until 6:00–6:30 PM, collecting survey responses. At this point I’ve developed a sort of mental interaction chart for how to move through the department effectively. The approach I’ve found to work the best is to first check in with the doctors in the RCU, the fast-track section of the ED, then move to southside, the section for non-critically ill patients, and ask whether either has any patients waiting on or already cleared for discharge. It took some trial and error to land on, but it’s become the most consistent method I have for finding eligible respondents.

I also met with Ms. Munroe this week to discuss my project’s final deliverable, which is a separate component from the final presentation. It was a productive conversation that gave me a clearer sense of what’s expected of me as my project enters its final stretch.

Thursday brought a new complication. It was the day I received the highest number of patients declining to take my survey, and on top of that, I encountered a notably high number of eligible patients who were non-English speakers. Between refusals and language barriers, it became clear that the pool of patients I can realistically collect responses from is even smaller than I discovered in past weeks. It’s a limitation I’ll need to address directly in my final work.

At one point during the week I ran into Dr. Daniel Novak, the PI for my study, while collecting surveys in the ED. He mentioned another potential eligibility category I hadn’t considered. Patients who had been admitted to the hospital have already completed their time in the ED. I was hopeful this could actually expand my eligible patient pool, but when I followed up with the ED patient representative, I was told there was no reliable way to locate those patients quickly for my specific goals. Unfortunately, that closed the door on what had felt like a promising expansion of my respondent pool.

In Week 10, I’ll begin working on both my final presentation and final deliverable while continuing to collect survey responses during my daily visits to Maimonides.