The End!

Hey everyone! I can’t believe that this was the final week of the senior project. It feels like it just started a couple weeks ago, but 10 weeks flew by so quickly! I want to say a massive thank you to both Ms. Rothlisberger, my NICU on-site mentor, and Dr. Vegunta, my Pediatric Surgery on-site mentor, for taking time out of their insanely busy schedules to not only let me observe within the units but also to guide me along the way. Also, a huge thank you to Ms. Conner for being there since the beginning and helping in every single situation and aspect related to the senior project, and to Ms. Mitrovich for helping me connect me find a second site placement and for dealing with all of my late messages (sorry!). Lastly, thanks to all of you for your questions, comments, and support for my project and for taking the time to read my posts every week, even if a few of them got too long. :)

Anyways, back to the project itself. Since it was the last week on-site, I spent a majority of my time analyzing the results from the surveys. I conducted a total of 43 survey interviews that I used for the sake of my project. There were a couple that I couldn’t use as either a question was left unanswered or the profession wasn’t specified, which would’ve ruined my result accuracy. Although I would’ve liked to have more, I’m glad I was able to conduct 43 as my original goal was 40. If you don’t recall from a few weeks ago what my survey looked like, here it is again: Within Pediatrics: It's a Family Matter Survey

Over the course of the 10 weeks, my question changed slightly as I became more focused on the awareness and opinions that the healthcare personnel had regarding family centered care rather that to what extent it was implemented. Originally, I expected that healthcare personnel that spent more time with patients such as nurses would have had a more positive reaction to family centered care. I also expected healthcare personnel that spend less time with the patients and the families such as the administrative staff or PCA’s would have less awareness about the subject. However, turns out that I was completely wrong.

The results came out with not significant different in between the different professions that I shadowing within the two facilities. In contrast, nurses were actually the most open about the drawbacks and negative aspects of family centered care. Another thing that was unexpected was the surveys that I conducted at the PACU, where the healthcare personnel attend to adult patients. That also led to interesting results, as a high proportion of nurses who cared for adults knew less about family centered care compared to those in pediatric care.

Once again, thank you so much for reading my journey with the senior project. I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much I did writing about it :)