Chapter 8: Mishaps
Good Morning Everyone!
This week’s blog post is on some mishaps that I faced during my research project!
Although it may seem like I picked a very niche topic, it was through sheer luck that I came to know about it. I really wanted to do something about Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, but I knew that I couldn’t actually work with babies. Because of this, I almost finalised a different topic but it took me a lot of digging to figure out who/what I was going to be studying.
Additionally, there was only one specialised clinic in Phoenix that works with NAS babies, which meant that if they did not say yes to working with me, my entire project would fall apart. Thankfully, they were super considerate and let me survey their nurses but had that not happened then I would have had to figure something else out.
I initially contacted my two sites in September/October but it took me until December until I actually got to start the study because of AP Research and IRB approval. This meant that one of my locations completely forgot about me. They weren’t responding to my emails or my calls and for around 3 weeks I solely focused on reconnecting before I could do my data collection.
After I got all of the data, I had to do the data analysis given in the Burnout Assessment tool, which was not straightforward. At one point, I did not even know what I was doing. It took me almost two weeks to sift through all the information that gave in the manual and find what I was supposed to do.
Regardless of all the mishaps that happened, I am on track to present my project for my AP Research presentation and my submit my final paper to the college board!