Introduction

Hello everyone!

My name is Alison Burge and I am a senior at BASIS Scottsdale High School.  BASIS isn't like most high schools; it allows its seniors to conduct a Senior Research Project (SRP) rather than attend regular classes during the third trimester of school.  For 10 weeks (from February until April) I will be working at the Wound Clinic at Osborn Hospital.  I hope to record my observations from my project on this blog!

My father is currently an infectious diseases physician, so medicine was a part of life growing up.  From a young age, my father would tell me stories about the patients he had and the methods he used to treat them.  Medicine seemed to me like putting pieces together in a puzzle or solving a riddle, and, because of my naturally curious nature, this immediately got me interested in a healthcare profession myself.  Although my intended career path has changed from veterinarian to orthodontist to medical doctor, healthcare has always been the intended goal.  I am hoping that this SRP will help me solidify my intended career path while learning more about wounds.

I will be working with both Dr. Stein and Dr. Weiland for the duration of my research project.  At my request, my father spoke to some of his colleagues about me possibly working with them for ten weeks, and I am very grateful that they offered to help me!

I met with Dr. Stein and Dr. Wayland about a week ago to discuss what I would be doing during this project and when we would start.  While during the meeting we were unsure whether I would be able to conduct a study using the data the doctors collect, which would have to be approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB), Dr. Stein recently spoke to IRB to see how long it would take for a  proposal to be approved, and it turns out it will only take approximately 7-10 days.  This means I can use their data to conduct a study after all!  I have yet to write the proposal, but I hope to start doing this in the next week.  Although the actual plan for my SRP is still tentative, I am hoping to follow patients at the Wound Clinic and determine background rates of healing for two different wound care products.  This could be, for example, using different skin replacement and analyzing if they differ in performance for healing wounds.  I hope to gather patients for 4 or 5 weeks and analyze the different wound care products for the next 4 or 5 weeks, while leaving a week or two at the end to crunch data using statistics.

The next step in my process is to write the IRB proposal and send it in for review so that I can start my project during the week of February 8th.  I will be going in to the Wound Clinic for 15 hours each week and I am extremely eager to start!  Please join me during my exploration of the fascinating world of wound care!