Week 7: The 10% Club
Zoey B -
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 plan to create statistics from my small sample size of around 15 babies. I have also researched general statistics about the premature population so that I can compare my sample size to the general population of preemies. This is how I learned that the premature birth rate is currently around 10%, which equates to around 300,000 to 400,000 premature births a year. 1
Some interesting things I noticed when imputing my data, is that 100% of the babies had jaundice and received photo-therapy treatments. Additionally, all but 1 of the babies had a feeding tube. The other thing that I noticed is that 11/15 of the babies were boys.
As for my internship, it was mainly the same as every other week, observing the nurses care for the babies, watching feedings, etc. However this week, there were three babies in the CCN (the most I have seen at one time) and I was able to hold all of them, including a preemie that needed to be held up to assist in his feeding.
As for last week, I had an interview during spring break with a mom that ran parent to parent in Utah. She explained the entire program to me and told me the benefits of parent to parent for the overall N.I.C.U. environment and community. Parent to parent is a program were the hospital connects past and current N.I.C.U. parents/families to each other and holds events so that the parents feel less isolated during their child’s stay in the N.I.C.U.. This is not something that is done in every N.I.C.U., and I have only heard of this specific program being at University of Utah’s hospital. Parents are connected to each other based on the circumstances of why their baby is about to be or was born premature. They are able to listen and ask questions to the person that has already gone through something similar, which helps them to feel supported and less alone during this process. In addition, this program also held reunions every year for families to come back and visit with one another. Unfortunately, the reunions are no longer being held due to COVID.
Overall, while less exciting than previous weeks, the week still was important for the progression of my project and I hope to finish evaluating my interview data soon. See you all next week!
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