Introduction to Senior Project Blogs
Connor L -
Hello! I am Connor Lucarevskiy, a senior at BASIS Tucson North. I am excited to share about my senior internship!
My mom has been a nurse for nearly twenty years, and her stories from work have inspired me to pursue nursing as my future career. Whether it was stories of her patients in the emergency room, or simply her explaining how to treat common medical problems, I fell in love with health care immediately. Nursing is the crucial and definitive way to save patients’ lives as it is these individuals who ensure that the patient receives all appropriate medical care, and who ensure that they receive the proper emotional support during these often stressful times at the hospital. Furthermore, doctors are also important in hospital settings as they are the leaders who guide the steps needed for the best possible care of the patients, through diagnoses and explanations of possible treatments for ailments and other medical problems. Without these strong and talented individuals, modern medicine would be nowhere near as advanced and exceptional as it is today. However, with all of these duties and responsibilities that come from being a medical professional, a severe conflict and stigma emerges among them: mental health.
Mental health is a wide and somewhat controversial topic that has received more attention and research in recent years. Throughout my high school career and life as a teenager and young adult, I have dealt with many mental health struggles that have often left me in a world of pain and darkness. Things such as maintaining good grades or maintaining a good relationship with my family and friends have often left me with feelings of anxiety and stress. Concepts such as depression and suicide are scary matters to think about, and discussing them is often a challenging thing to do. However, I have learned to understand and adapt to my mental health struggles by finding positive outlets such as music and movies and talking about my struggles with people who mean the most to me. Unfortunately, the same can not often be said the same for many nurses and doctors.
In the medical world, there appears to be a stigma of mental health, especially mental health struggles. In discussions of mental health, many doctors and nurses seem to stray away from the conversation, which is ironic given that the goal of these medical professions is to encourage positive health actions. However, there are a few reasons why there is this stigma. As a doctor or a nurse, you are expected by society to be strong and tough through all situations and matters, and any sense of weakness is often viewed as a bad reflection of your character. Additionally, many medical professionals fear opening up about their mental health as they worry that the hospital might take action on this through less work time or even possible firing. There are many more reasons why this stigma seems to exist, and my goal for my project is to understand and figure out why it seems to lurk in many hospitals.
To understand and study why this stigma exists, I want to explore how the working environment of hospitals affects the mental health of doctors and nurses. To do this, I will conduct a shadowing/volunteering experience at a combination of Carondelet’s St. Mary’s and St. Joseph’s Hospital. I will shadow several ER doctors and work alongside nurses to understand from their point of view how the hospital and the tresses that come from it affect their mental health, and why the stigma surrounding it exists. I will conduct interviews with these medical professionals and record data on my observations in the hospital to develop a definitive answer and seek an answer on how this stigma can be broken.
I am looking forward to and can not wait to begin blogging my findings and developing conclusions from my data, and am excited to share all of this with you all! In these next few months, I aim to develop a personal understanding of mental health as it is crucial to the overall well-being of the doctors, nurses, and thus the patients.
I will see you all next week! Until we meet again.
Connor
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