Blog 14: Interview 3 Preparation

EQ: How can a primary care nurse best ensure the quality of care for their patients? 

1.  Who do you plan to interview?  What is this person's area of expertise?

•  I plan on Interviewing my mentor, or one of her co-workers. She's been out of town and just got back, so the whole interview planning is still in the works. 

2.  Verify that you have called your interviewee to schedule an interview.  What is the date and time of the interview? 

• Interview is set to happen February 1st, or the 8th, depending on work schedule of the interviewee. The time would be at 2:00pm at my mentor's office in Arcadia, CA.  

3.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you find research resources that would help to answer the EQ.

• What can a nurse do to make sure that the patient and him/her are always on the same page? Are there any obstacles she/he must overcome? 

4.  Phrase an open-ended question that will help you think about other useful activities you might do to help you answer the EQ (IC2, possible experts to talk to, etc).

• How do you ensure that the patient feels safe enough to trust the nurse that's working with him/her? 

5.  Phrase two open-ended questions that help you to understand your interviewee's perspective on an aspect of your EQ. 

• Have you ever encountered bad quality of care by a nurse? If so, How'd that work out for you?
• How does a patient learn that she's getting all the help she needs? What reassures the patient and why?

Blog 13: 10 Hour Mentorship Check-In

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?

• Ramona Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

2.   Who is your contact?  What makes this person an expert?

• My contact at the moment is Rose Robledo. This person is an expert because she's a certified nurse in her field and program. She graduated with a bachelors and is now striving for her masters to obtain the best medical education that she can. 

3.   How many  hours have you done during the school year? (Summer Mentorship Hours and Mentorship Hours should be reflected separately in your Senior Project Hours log located on the right hand side of your blog).

• Because of the struggles of finding a mentor, and then the struggles of finding a center to volunteer at, I only have a total of 11 hours (school year wise) at the moment. My goal is to hopefully work for as many as I can, goal: 75 hours.

4.   Succinctly summarize what you did, how well you and your mentor worked together, and how you plan to complete the remaining hours.

• So, at the rehab center one of the first things I did so far was go over the protocol procedures. Theres an evacuation plan, there's an emergency exit plan, earthquake and vacancy plan, etc. I spent the first week sort of going over, trying to fully understand and memorize the color codes and calls. I also watched the patients interact with visitors because that's one of the most important key roles in a rehab center. I learned all about ho much a simple friend can mean to someone who lives at a rehab or nursing center. My mentor and I are still al little dry, but I hope that it goes away as we work more together. At the moment, I plan to try to do 4 hours per day for 3 days a week, so that I can separate mentorship and independent component hours. 

Blog 12: Holiday Project Update

1. It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school.  What did you do over the break with your senior project?

• Over the course of winter break, I was actually able to finally get a place to accept me as a volunteer: Ramona Rehabilitation Center. Now, I'll be able to do my independent component hours there after the TB shot check-up has been approved. 

2.  What was the most important thing you learned from what you did, and why?  What was the source of what you learned?

•  The most important thing that I learned from actually being able to get a place that allows me volunteer, is that its hard. Finding a facility that allows volunteers, under 18 years old, to volunteer and keep up with the pace that the authority figures have is something I struggled with. There were lot of hospital confidentiality issues, so that was a big concern. I learned that I must be a bit patient, but at the same time very persistent and aggressive so that you're taken seriously. 

3.  Your third interview will be a 10 question interview related to possible answers for your EQ. Who do you plan to talk to and why?

•  I plan to talk to the main nurse from the Rehabilitation Center so that I'm able to find some answers for my new, approved, and developed Essential Question.

Blog 11: Lesson 1 Reflection

1. What are you most proud of in your lesson, and why?
• I'm most proud of my final lesson template component because it's detailed, it's very organized, and because it's easy to follow. 
2. What assessment would you give yourself on your lesson? Explain why you earned that grade using evidence from the component contract.
   
• Based off the component contract, I qualify for a "P", however that may not be the grade I get. Overall, I think that I deserve an AP, due to the fact that I cited more than 1 source and mentioned my mentor and my 1st interview. I believe that because of my fast speed in talking, I wasn't too clear, so that may be brining my grade down. In addition to that, I don't know if I proved that I had all the knowledge and points across the way I thought I did, so that may have brought me down as well. 
3. If you could go back, what would you change about your lesson?  How can you use that knowledge to give a better Lesson 2?
• If I could go back, I would change the overload on information. I think that because I had such an overload of information to provide the class with, I panicked so I spoke fast. I would change the way I grasp my peers' attention and the way I presented my points. I believe that for lesson 2, I should learn from all the mistakes that I may have done and improve upon everything. One thing I'll take into consideration is to practice my presentation more than twice; I should learn it and try to teach the class more on the topic, rather than just spit information that may not make sense. For lesson 2, I should be a lot more prepared of what's expected and I should be a lot more educated on my topic - making it easier to talk about. 

Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

• My actual mentorship is actually starting Monday, November 2nd at 2:00pm. I've had quite some trouble finding a mentor, but as of last week, I was able to finally find one that's willing to walk the journey with me. I hope that I will be able to shadow her and her working projects.

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?   

• Mrs. Flores actually helped me find my mentor. One day, she walked into Mr. Rivas's class and they were talking about the senior project. He then decided to point out the fact that I, Itzia, still didn't have a mentor. She decided to ask me for my topic, and I told her. Immediately she smiled and stated that she had a friend that can potentially suit my topic, and she told me that she'd email her. So, I reminded her and she emailed. Within a day, I had a response  - yes. So, Nurse Johnson, my mentor, decided to meet up in person on October 23rd, so that we could talk about how this whole mentorship would work out. On that exact same day, after we figured out our schedule and stuff, I decided to interview her and we got to know each other quite well. I'm guessing that my persistence and my eagerness convinced her to say yes. 

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person?

• From a 1 through 10, I would say that my comfort level with Nurse Johnson is a 6. This is probably because we haven't quite started on the mentorship. 

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

• Everything went well with this interview. I think this because her answers were straight to the point, very concise and straightforward. The questions were simple, things felt nice. Maybe I need to improve my questions, and come up with a lot of more in-depth questions. I know this because our total interview time is literally like 5 minutes - it could've been longer if I had asked better questions. Maybe next time, I'll ask peers about my questions, and ask for feedback on how well they're asked/written. 

- Link to voice memo: Interview #2 - 

* CLICK HERE* 

Blog 9 - Advisory Prep 3

1. State whether or not you currently have a mentor, and what the status of your interview is with that person (I have completed the interview, I have scheduled the interview, I have not scheduled the interview, etc).

• Finally, I think I may have found my person - or my mentor. The interview is scheduled to actually be conducted on Monday, October 25. 

2. At this point, your research is probably guiding your studies toward more specific areas within your topic.  Name the area or two you find most promising and explain your reasons.   

• I'm actually not quite sure about these topics yet. However, after I get to meet my mentor and talk to her about everything, I believe that I will be able to answer this question in more detail. 

3. What kinds of sources do you think will help you in the next month to gain more research depth?  Where will you go to get them?

• I believe that articles will be my main key of sources. I rely on them, I depend on them. To get more in-depth information, I believe that I will try to grasp more detailed articles, look into books, or even read journals. 

4. Write down a possible EQ.  Please don't worry about wording other than ensuring that it provides the option for multiple correct answers.  At this point, the senior team is most interested in understanding your thought process.

• What is the best way that a primary doctor can ensure the well being of a patient? 

Blog 8: Independent Component 1 Proposal

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.

• For my 30 hours of my independent component, I plan on probably doing mentorship hours. This way, I get to do 30 hours of something totally different rather than the usual work at mentorship. It'd be cool if I were able to actually get the chance to work with someone else for these 30 hours, just to see the different opinions and judgment calls within my mentor and a co-worker of hers/his. However, this may mean that I may want to learn about a more specific topic within the area of my topic, or learn about a topic that goes hand-in-hand with mine. 
• I may just want to do a mini project, based on what I've done with the extra mentorship days. I'm currently, still thinking. . .

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.

• What I'll do to meet the expectations of showing 30 hours of evidence is by taking a picture of every hour at work. Of course, I'd also have the person I'm working with sign off, along with writing a small summary of what we did for that hour. So, evidence will be supported by details and pictures all through the 30 hours of this component. 

3.  Explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.

• What I'm doing will allow me to see a different perspective, or a different topic that ties in with my topic. So, this means that I'll have questions that contradict my topic and my Independent Component, allowing me to research answers and gain more knowledge of both. I'm technically using these 30 hours, to allow myself to learn about my topic in a slightly different way. 

4.  Update your Senior Project Hours log.