At the time of writing I am working at Nationwide Children’s Hospital as a patient care assistant and I think I have found the population that I would want to work with! I have never imagined myself wanting to work in the pediatric world but after about a year at NCH I think I really enjoy working with this population. There are many days where it is hard working as a PCA but it only takes a single event to make my day better.

As a PCA, I work with kids closely as we check up on them hourly and this help me further develop my time management skills. From my previous jobs, I have only had to work on one patient or participants at a time but as a PCA, I am responsible for up to 8 kids total. In order to get all the task done I needed to learn how to prioritize and work with the assigned nurse to care for these kids.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, my role at the research lab slowed down and it allowed me time to work at Grant Medical Center as a patient safety aide. As hospitals were struggling with the sheer amount of COVID patients, I worked as an safety aide to provide 1:1 care for patient who are at risk for self harm and elopement. Being able to work in one of central Ohio’s biggest hospital allowed me to work with a diverse population. I works mainly in the emergency department, cardiac surgical floor, and the trauma floor.

My most memorable story from my time as a safety aide there was when I was sitting with a middle aged man on the trauma floor after multiple attempts of self mutilation. We spent my shift talking about whatever he wanted and when he opened up and explained why he did what he did. From this job, I learned that connecting with the patients is a key role in what medicine is and learning about them and their “whys” can help me better connect with them. Trust is earned through conversations. Being a safety aide has help me build on communication skills and learn to work with a diverse group of people.

I started in Dr. Lynne Gauthier’s Neuro-recovery lab fall semester of 2018 as a student research assistant. The team I joined worked on the computerized therapy for rehabilitation of upper extremities for patients after stoke. As the project title suggest, the research primarily focused testing the effectiveness of a video game model for patient rehabilitation. As a new addition to the lab, I focused on learning the background of the project and any necessary skills I will need for the lab. A major tool that I had to master was learning to to code in MATLAB as that is where all the data was analyzed.

As time went on, I slowly transitioned into an active role in participant screening and follow up testing allowing me to work with participants directly. Through the screening process, I get to test participants to gather their baseline level. If their level is within the project’s acceptable constraints, the participants will be enrolled. After the participants complete the therapy, I schedule and complete the initial follow-up and then another follow-up in 6 months.

Through this experience, I learned the ins and outs of a clinical trial and learn that my passion lies on working with people directly. In my role, I got to explore all aspects of research from following participants from start to finish, assist in paper writing, analyzing data, and communicate with patients to work through technological issues they experience at home with the treatment. It was an amazing experience and I learned greatly from this project.

Link to published paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.101239