Here students will provide monthly updates on their projects and utilize the page as a resource for feedback, guidance, and direction. You can attach documents, images, post links, or use the discussion text box to provide your update.
Student peers and community partners are encouraged to comment, provide suggestions, and ask questions regarding the updates.
February is/will be a slow month for my project and my elective hours in general. I am currently on an international rotation in Argentina will somewhat limited access to strong wifi. Luckily, I implemented my project in January and was able to complete my volunteer/community service hours in December and January as well. Despite still being busy with interviews and second looks, I was able to get the bulk of critical items completed before travelling to Argentina. When I return, data analysis will be the next critical step to prepare for my final presentation.
This month focused primarily on dissemination and collaboration. An abstract of my project was accepted for presentation at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) meeting in April 2026. Preparation is underway to clearly outline our workflow, implementation considerations, and early insights in a practical, applicable way for other pediatric clinics. I also worked with a PGY-3 resident from our team on their submission to the Pratt Lecture Series, helping incorporate themes of narrative medicine and caregiver voice into their presentation. In addition, I contributed to a newsletter for the Narrative Medicine, Compassionate Arts, and Healing (NMCAH) Research Group within the UC Taft Research Center, highlighting ongoing narrative-based scholarship.
Moving forward, we will continue caregiver interviews, refine our coding framework, and prepare for the upcoming presentation in April.
I ran into an unexpected road block in my project this month where my community partner has been very slow to respond to me… My project has been ebbing and flowing throughout the year based on changes at Equitas, but this is the first time that I haven’t heard anything back in a few weeks when I’ve reached out. December and January felt like we were making good progress, so I’m wondering if something big changed…
I raised this issue at dinner with Dr. Kiesler, and he is going to try and reach out on my behalf! Hoping to get some clarity soon so that I can finish out my hours and close the loop on the project that I started.
Everything is going as expected! We are seeing about a 50% response rate for new clinic patients. We have two more clinics to follow-up plus the existing client base, and I expect we will be way over predicted sample size. We’ve enlisted a whole new leadership team and are training the staff on our new patient log and survey technique. My community partner has been communicative, supportive and instrumental in carrying out this special project. I anticipate challenges come data analysis.
Data collection and data analysis is currently underway. I expect the last of the data to be collected by mid March. So far some strides are being seen in tovertafel use with memory and mood. I will not spoil the rest. My community partner is giving me the utmost support in making sure I am focusing on my project and not on direct care support, which in the past has slowed down my project progress.
February was a slower month for my project with in person rotations. In March we are going to pivot my project for future students, utilizing a selt-made survey to gauge prior home-evaluations and patients/parents experience with them.
So sorry for submitting my February update late! January was jam packed with progress on this project and in February I was gone the entire month doing an away rotation. I started to look over the raw results of what we had gotten from the focus group, but not yet processing any of the data. Slow month here but it was made up for in March.