…it’s here…the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the last blog post you’ll ever read from me…twelve weeks of arduous struggles and subtle successes…it’s all about to be revealed now. WOW. it’s hard to believe that all my hard work over the past 12 weeks is nearing it’s end right now and hopefully it’s all about to pay off…
but, before I divulge into my whole experience and update you on this weeks antics, i’d like to thank my external advisor, Martha, and my internal advisor, Mrs. Wendel, for their immense support throughout this journey and for engraining new wisdom into me every week. I wouldn’t have gotten this far in my project without them.
now on to some updates/work that I’ve accomplished over this (last!!!) week. well to begin with, a couple of days ago, Wednesday to be specific, I was able to consolidate all the research data browser information I had collected into an excel spreadsheet that has over 8 sheets on it, and it’s allowed me to easily make connections and add more to my proposed clinical guideline. it’s a little hard to explain, so I’m going to insert a couple of screenshots of my excel spreadsheet down below so you can get a clearer grasp of what I’m talking about. that was the biggest success I accomplished this week. however, with every up, there’s a down, and unfortunately, the down associated with this up was that I wasn’t able to completely my proposed clinical guideline aka my final product this week, BUT thankfully my external advisor has allowed me to come over for a couple of days next week to work on the proposal with her and wrap it up, so needless to say, my final product will be ready in time for my official senior project presentation on may 22, 2018 at the doubletree hotel in san jose, so if you wanna come on down and see my final work, feel free to come along!
wow, it really is hard to believe that my senior project journey is coming to a close, so I thought I would reflect on some things I’ve discovered about myself throughout this adventure as well as what I’ve learned from this project. firstly, looking back on it now, my research question seems too simple and vague to be honest because there’s so many different aspects to my project – not just whether or not clinicians are following the current clinical practical guideline and noting the trends of opioid abuse among those not following it, but also what medication diagnoses the patients are being given and how those diagnoses have affected them mentally and physically, as well as how these could have been avoided. on top of that, there’s also the issue of how not only the veteran population is being affected but people across the world. opioid abuse can’t just be restricted to a small sample size, so I had to have a more holistic approach to my project overall which I realized about 1/3 of the way through my journey. thankfully I was able to learn this pretty early on so I could make the necessary adjustments for the remainder of my project. apart from that, there’s also the issue of medical jargon that through me off because my high school science education could have only educated me so much for this project. I would often run into the problem of coming across a few words I didn’t know when I was reading a scientific research article which would lead me to search up its definition, but then the definition would include other fancy jargon that I wouldn’t know which would end in be following the rabbit hole and pretty soon, reading that ONE (1) research article would take me hours, thereby causing me to “waste” more time, etc…
overall, this project really changed my perspective on handling data and information and allowed me to really understand the intensity it takes to accomplish something that sounds and looks easy – data extraction, but I’m really thankful I got to be a part of this experience because this proposal is only the beginning of this project, and it’s really cool to be a part of something from it’s start to it’s finish, so hopefully I can get there.
also, I know that my writing isn’t that great and I’m not super accustomed to making blog posts, so everything might have felt out of place (I know I have been feeling that way because ive never really written blog posts before), but I promise I know how to talk about the information I have learned really well, so be sure to hear my presentation in more depth and with more clarity on may 22!
hope to see y’all then, and if not, well here’s to the end of one adventure, but the beginning of many more.
cheers,
avani
Opioid Therapy 