Week 4

It's week 4 and I'm finally starting data collection.

Regardless of what my badge says, I don't have access to the clinic's database like all of the other employees because of my age. So, instead, Dr. Zieman and the clinic's program coordinator have to print off stacks (and I mean stacks) of patient information and white-out their names before giving them to me. I'm extremely grateful that they're willing to take the time to even do this. 

As far as the "screening" process goes, patients were chosen carefully by Dr. Zieman based on several criteria. Age was the biggest factor. We sorted through patient files to age-match each study group patient to another control group patient. This ensures that the mean age for both groups will not affect our results. Other factors such as history of substance abuse or history of mental disorder did not necessarily disqualify patients from the study, but they had to be considered. There are only 300 patients total that are treated here at the clinic, and only about 40 of those are reported domestic violence victims. Only 7 of the 40 DV patients have attended speech therapy more than once. 

This cuts down my target population to below 10, which is a problem.

It's a generally agreed upon fact that statistical validity is dependent on sample size. With such a small group (14 patients with both the study and control), I fear that my results will be inconclusive. Since I don't have the resources to expand my study, there's really no other option but to work with the population that I have. I'm hoping for the best. 

Actually compiling the data isn't too difficult. Essentially, I've been reading through each patient file and noting their age, sex, number of visits, and symptoms in an Excel spreadsheet. Their physical, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms were reported by the patients themselves using a severity scale (from 0 to 6). Each time the patients visited the clinic, they filled out this same symptom questionnaire. My spreadsheet records the symptoms on a 0 to 6 scale for each individual visit (for both the study and control groups). After completing this spreadsheet, I plan on graphing the data to compare the experimental and control groups.

Patient Symptom Severity Sheet

I haven't been living up to my role as clinical observer much this week because I've been busy collecting all of my data. However, I did get to shadow Dr. Zieman as she injected pain medication into her patient's skull. Apparently head injections can drive a grown man to tears. You learn something new every day.