Zoey B's Senior Project Blog

Project Title: The History of Neonatal Technology and its Effects on Preemie Health Outcomes
BASIS Advisor: Christine Bradford
Internship Location: Yavapai Regional Medical Center East Campus, Prescott Valley, Az 86314
Onsite Mentor: Candace Garko, Family Birthing Center Director



Project Abstract

The field of neonatology has evolved immensely over the past 50 years and has allowed health care professionals to better care for premature babies. Since technology and medicine is always evolving, my goal for this project was to understand how these developments have not only increased survival rate, but also how they could have impacted the mental health of premature babies. Because I wanted to spread awareness to this topic, I researched medical journals and interviewed doctors and nurses to learn about how the care of premature babies has evolved over the past 50 years with new technologies. I shadowed nurses in the YRMC Family Birthing Center to understand how these technologies are used currently. I have a strong passion for this topic because I was a premature baby, and had to rely on a lot of these neonatal technologies in order to survive. Therefore, I have experience with how this situation affects families and interviewed people that have had a premature child to see if there is a correlation between their experience in the N.I.C.U. and their child’s physical and mental health, as well as to see how each person’s story is different based on the time period they were in the N.I.C.U.

    My Posts:

  • Week 10: Three’s a Crowd

    The excitement continues in the C.C.N.!! Hi everyone, I'm excited to share my week with you all! I was able to go back to my internship at the hospital this week. There were three babies in the C.N.N. this week that were all full-term. They were all delivered via c-sections as well. One was a... Read More

  • Week 9: Level Up

    Hi everyone! This week was definitely slower than the rest, so it might be a shorter blog this week. Unfortunately, I got sick this week and was unable to go to the hospital to do my internship. Instead, I focused on putting together the data from my interviews with doctors and nurses. This was way... Read More

  • Week 8: Statistically Speaking…

    Hello everyone! This week has been all about, you guessed it, statistical data! I spent the beginning of my week working with my advisor to create graphs and charts from my interview data. This allows me to see the general trends of my data and analyze it as a whole. I plan to use these... Read More

  • Week 7: The 10% Club

    Hi everyone! This week was admittedly less exciting than previous weeks have been. However, it is just as important as others. This week, I mainly focused on statistics. I spent multiple hours imputing all of my notes from interviews into Google sheets so that I could create a data set. From this data set, I... Read More

  • Week 5: From Scheduled to Unexpected

    Hi everyone! This week has been extremely exciting for me. At my internship, I was able to observe not just one, but two c-sections. Both of these babies were born full term, so while not directly related to my area of research, being able to see this procedure was an amazing opportunity. During this day... Read More

  • Week 4: Pass The Mic

    Hi everyone! I can't wait to share everything I have been up to this past week. The majority of my week was spent doing interviews with numerous families. I spoke to a mom that had twins in the N.I.C.U., a mom that had a son in the N.I.C.U. in 1991, and a mom that had... Read More

  • Week Three: Coming Full Circle

    Hey everyone! I'm so excited to discuss my week with you all. This week was extremely special to me because I was able to have an interview with a registered nurse (RN) that cared for me when I was in the N.I.C.U. This nurse has worked in the N.I.C.U. for almost 30 years and was... Read More

  • Week 2: Let’s Get Personal

    This week, I mainly worked on preparing and scheduling interviews with families that have had a premature baby and with people that have been premature. I had three interviews this past week. One interview was with a person that had been born premature in the 1960's. The other two were with mothers that had a... Read More

  • Week 1: Breath In, Breathe Out

    My first week of senior project consisted of a lot of research. The main focus of my research was on different ways to deliver oxygen to a premature child. This is arguably the most important thing that technology has aided in over the years. Most premature babies will suffer from RDS or respiratory distress syndrome... Read More

  • How the Care of Premature Babies has Evolved: Introductory Blog Post

    My name is Zoey and I am a senior in high school. I am working on a senior project where I will be researching the history of neonatal technology. My goal for this project is to learn about how these technologies have evolved throughout the past century and to see how they are being used... Read More