Happy 4th of July! I'm starting to think that it'd be much nicer to have every Sunday and Wednesday off instead of every Saturday and Sunday... Today is such a wonderful break!
Anyway, things with work have gotten a bit better. I felt very accomplished actually getting in touch with one of the women in Juárez who delivered a few weeks ago. I'm going to interview her tomorrow morning, so hopefully everything goes off without a hitch. Now I just need to continuously stalk the other four women over there until they answer their phones, and also start working at a second hospital sometime next week. Luckily, with the latter, I'm partnering up with a really cool epidemiologist who has taken a lot of interest in my study- he even called me so we could talk more about what I'm looking for!
On the U.S.-side, I'll hopefully have a second interview with another woman either late this week or early next week. I feel kind of bad stalking people down when they're adjusting to life with a new baby, but I don't know another way around it.
I'm still having recruitment issues here. Unfortunately, a well-known OB-GYN in El Paso had a bike accident a few weeks after I arrived, and he died from the injuries last week. He was supposed to participate in my study, but obviously that didn't work out. However, the two doctors who have taken responsibility for all of his patients were also supposed to participate in my study, and they told me on Monday that it won't be possible because they already feel so over-loaded.
On top of this tragedy, I'm still not officially cleared at this one hospital in El Paso. I sat through a worthless HIPAA training with medical residents on Monday and got a badge saying I'm "shadowing", and was told that once those were complete I'd be all set. However, yesterday afternoon before I left work, I got an email from some compliance woman saying that she doesn't understand how my study is IRB exempt. I'm getting quite frustrated having to explain to people that I'm doing a small, qualitative study that's non-generalizable and doesn't require looking at any confidential health information. My supervisor keeps reminding me that people aren't used to dealing with public health studies, especially in this area. I guess it's helpful for me to think of this as strengthening research capacity here, although that doesn't actually diminish my frustrations.
Although things with my own work aren't exactly perfect, I've been really enjoying doing other work in my office. For example, yesterday morning I prepped some tables and figures for publication for my supervisor. Then yesterday afternoon I worked with a local public health student to teach her how to use SAS. Doing this has definitely affirmed that Emory was the perfect school for me- it's amazing to realize how much I've learned throughout the past year! This type of stuff has also helped me hone in on what I want to be doing after I graduate in May, which is certainly a good thing!
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