Elizabeth Pedowitz: Moving from Data Collection to Data Analysis BACK

Published by AFAR

My research is continuing to go well. My project consists of looking at how much time physicians in the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors (MSVD) program spend providing care outside of home visits. Physicians have been filling out research forms I’ve created for every interaction/event they have outside of the home visits related to patient care. I’m currently in the last week of data collection.

I’ve been entering data for the last couple of weeks and I’m nearing the end of it, thankfully. Entering the data has taken much more time than I thought it would. The number of research forms the physicians handed back to me is astounding.  I’m really relieved to see they were able to complete the forms despite their incredibly busy schedules. And despite the time commitment, I’d much rather have tons of data than not enough! On Monday I’m meeting with my PI so we can discuss how to analyze the data that I’ve collected and put in an excel spreadsheet.

One of my research questions is how the time spent providing care outside of home visits differs in the two different models of care that MSVD has. The team approach has a nurse practitioner take many of the calls that come in for the physicians, whereas the regular practice does not have this. It will be interesting to see how the time compares between physicians in each group. My PI and I hypothesize that if you take the time that the NP spends providing care for the team, it will end up equaling the extra combined time of the physicians in the regular practice.

Our weekly MSTAR classes have been going well. This week we talked about data analysis and last week we spoke about eye and ear issues in geriatrics patients. It was interesting learning what is and is not part of normal aging. We did both a hearing and vision exercise. The hearing exercise was called the “Unfair hearing test” and we had to listen to a bunch of words played out loud with different frequencies simulating hearing loss. We were supposed to write down what we thought the words were. We all had a lot of trouble figuring out the right words. The doctor teaching us explained that many elderly people have problems with high frequencies so when speaking with someone who is hard of hearing don’t speak louder but rather more slowly and with a lower tone.  The vision exercise involved a bunch of plastic glasses simulating different types of vision loss. It was really interesting to be put in the shoes of someone with vision loss or hearing loss.

I also have had some extremely interesting shadowing experiences. Last Wednesday I was with the Concurrent team doing rounds in the hospital. One patient spoke Spanish and the fellow I was with didn’t, so I had to translate while she assessed the patient’s mental capacity by asking such things as “Who is the president?”, “What year is it?”, “Can you please draw a clock that shows 2 o’clock?” etc. I then had to continue to translate when a cardiologist came by to tell her that she had three vessel coronary disease. I wasn’t 100% comfortable translating this because it was such upsetting news to the patient and her daughter. However, it showed me how important my Spanish knowledge is. One patient we saw had had a massage and meditation session the day before as part of the Geriatrics department’s services. She said that it had definitely calmed her down. I’m sure integrative medicine is underused and it was great to see it being given to patients here and to see them benefitting from it.

This is Elizabeth Pedowitz's second MSTAR Diary. Read the first here.