Week 4:
Cruising Along

July 14, 2017

Week 4 was a short work week due to the holiday. I began the week still in Idaho with family. On Monday, we drove about an hour to a place called Garden Valley, where we went floating in the river. The river runs through the mountains, giving beautiful scenery to the relaxing float trip. We also had to help unload the truck full of hay that had come in.

Sadly, I had to leave on the afternoon of the Forth of July. In the morning, though, we went on another trip to the foothills. This time we decided it would be fun to ride the horses on the trails. We had to ride in shifts as people outnumbered the horses. During my ride up to the top of the foothills, we saw something stick out its head and slither across the trail. It was a rattlesnake! Luckily, we saw the snake before the horses did and were able to stop them far enough back. We waited until the snake was across and out of sight, then continued on our way. At the top of the foothills, we switched riders and I hiked back down to the bottom.

Since I was only at work for three days, this week went by really fast. I had to make up for being gone Monday, so I had to work extra hours to get the necessary amount of data in. There were on lectures or meetings this week, so I was able to really focus on data entry. Hopefully, I will have over half the data entry complete by the end of week 5.

We are working with a company called Compass who is helping us use medical codes to determine who was given opioids. We are looking at the initial visits for the patient’s injury, but sometimes the first visit is miss labeled. Because of this problem, we are looking for any opioid prescription written up to 30 days prior to the initial visit we record. If a patient goes to the ER for an injury and gets an opioid then an orthopedist is not likely to also prescribe an opioid even if needed, because the patient already had them. If our data records the orthopedic appointment as the initial visit, then our data would say the patient did not receive an opioid. Obviously, this would cause our data to be skewed and potentially give an inaccurate picture about the prescribing trends in athletes.

Due to some issues like initial visit problem, we may have to alter or narrow our study. We may have to make adjustments like picking only certain types of injuries for example. My supervisor mentioned that due to the pertinence of the opioid epidemic, any information is useful. He said for that reason, it is very likely we will get a paper out of this research. I was incredibly excited to hear that good news! I will be staying a week after the project is to be finished, so I may get to help write the paper. What an amazing opportunity that would be! My fingers are crossed that I can help.

Unfortunately, this weekend is not as exciting as previous weekends. I will be spending most of my weekend writing my midterm paper for this internship. I will also be cleaning and grocery shopping in preparation for a visitor coming in a few short days.