Research Assistant
Research Assistant to Dr. Lee Brooks
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
34th St and Civic Center Blvd
Philadelphia, PA 19104
July 2015-Present
I collect, analyze, and manage data related to an Early Onset Adolescent Narcolepsy study with Physicians from Children’s Hospitals across the country. I assist with the topic proposal, design of a survey, generating custom reports, collection and analyzation of data, and query resolution.
I was hired in July 2015 by Dr. Lee Brooks as a Research Assistant at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Once on board of Dr. Brook’s team we brainstormed topics branching off of Narcolepsy. Early Onset Adolescent Narcolepsy was decided upon and a proposal was constructed. During this process I was able to use a lot of the skills that I had learned in MIS 2501 from the Flash Research Assignments to keep it concise yet informative.
I worked in correlation with Belinda Carter from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to construct a survey. This survey is completed with each patient to determine if they meet the study requirement. The design of the survey is a critical component in the recruitment step. The focus was placed on ensuring that each of the requirements are addressed and elaborated on in enough detail.
My primary focus as a Research Assistant is the data. I begin in the recruitment process by generating a report off of the hospital database with patients diagnosed with Narcolepsy. From that report numerous additional reports are generated to eliminate any patients that do not meet the study requirements. Once the final report is generated it contains the contact information of each patient that meets the study requirements. From this report I contact each of the patients and complete the survey to collect additional data. Once each patient’s data is collected it is entered into a separate study database called RedCap. From here the analyzation process begins to compare and contrast categories such as symptoms, age ratios, and weight relation to monitor and predict trends.
There are numerous queries regarding data entry that are sent out weekly from the RedCap database. My secondary focus as a Research Assistant is to resolve these queries in a timely fashion with factual information and solutions.
The results of the research will assist with future treatments and diagnosis of Narcolepsy among adolescents.