Thursday, April 26, 2012

Patient Surveys: Day 26

Today was my final day of surveying patients! Over the past two days, I've interviewed ten more patients with PHQ-9, bringing my grand total to seventy subjects for my study after twenty-six days of patient surveys. These twenty-six days have certainly been the most involving days of my senior project and I can finally begin to analyze my results next week (the final working week of my research).



Patients 60 - 63 all had similar HbA1c levels but their PHQ-9 scores were either a 0 or 6. A PHQ-9 score of 6 may seem high, considering it's more than halfway to a diagnosis of a DSM-IV depressive disorder (PHQ-9 score of 10 or greater). But at the same time, consider the PHQ-9 survey again. I feel that surveying some of my peers, for example, who are currently stressing about their AP exams (undoubtedly "Over the last 2 weeks"), could easily score a 6: "feeling tired or having little energy," "trouble falling or staying asleep," "poor appetite or overeating," "trouble concentrating on things" could all be symptomatic of this highly stressful time of year for any student. Likewise, Patients 60 - 63 could, in actuality, all be entirely not depressed; it could just be that Patients 60 and 62 showed more depressive symtoms on PHQ-9 because of recently stressful events, whether or not that's due to their diabetes.

My research project was structured as follows: during the first few weeks, I did some preliminary research solely to better understand and educate myself on the subject; during the bulk of the project, I conducted patient interviews and retrieved data while attempting to make well-informed observations based on whatever knowledge I had gained on the subject; finally, I will make a scientifically-based analysis with my data.

I just want to clarify (again) that over the past twenty-six days, the trends and observations I've noted have been purely conjecture, and my attempt to explain, as interestingly as possible, the data contained in these four hundred ninety-seven cells. The final data analysis won't contain any mention of these 'trends' (unless I note them to be my own conjecture) because they're not scientifically backed by data.


Lalani.

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