Mira's Quest Project - Assessing the Need For Increased Brain/Body Axis Relationship in Patient Care.
Mira is a First Year Franke Wildcat studying Psychological Sciences.
Tell us about your Quest Project:
I got involved in Quest because I was really interested in this program as it is my first exposure to traditional academic research, and it also provided me the opportunity to share my work at my very first poster presentation. Specifically, the Quest Program has allowed me to learn about conducting research along the way with the help of my mentor, and I was able to pick a topic that really interested me and that I wanted to learn more about. I felt like this was the perfect way to dip my toes into the research field, and after talking with Tori Nardinelli several times about the program I learned the possibilities were endless depending on what I wanted to achieve!
My mentor is Dr. Tara Carr who is an Allergist and Immunologist at Banner-North and is affiliated with the Department of Medicine at the University of Arizona. Dr. Tara Carr and I talked about how the impact of the interaction of the mind on the body, otherwise known as the brain/body axis, is increasingly recognized by physicians and their patients, particularly as it impacts patients with chronic medical conditions. However, Dr. Tara Carr thought it would be interesting to learn more about the extent of the brain/body axis relationship on patients in the Allergy & Immunology outpatient sub-specialty clinic at Banner-North. Particularly, we studied patients' awareness of the brain/body axis relationship and physicians' interest in furthering patient care toward improving the brain/body axis, since these relationships are unknown.
With the guidance of Dr. Tara Carr, I developed a questionnaire (QI) that assessed the need for increased brain/body axis relationship in patient health care, gained approval for the QI from the Institutional Review Boards (IRB), and satisfied the Non-Humans Subjects Research Determination Requirements and Attestation. The Medical Assistants (MAs) at the Allergy & Immunology clinic - Kyara Elliott, Hannah Rethy, and Eva Dorame - were kind enough to administer the QIs for 12 weeks to patients as they were checked in and waited to be seen by their physicians. I collected the responses from the clinic periodically and compiled/analyzed the data in Excel. The findings from this study were that based on the 88 respondents, the majority of patients were interested in learning more about the brain/body axis and its impact on their overall health. There appears to be a disconnect between patients' interest in learning more about the brain/body axis and the amount of attention physicians spend on this relationship. This could result from a physician's lack of understanding, time, and awareness of their patients' interest on this axis. I believe it is important to implement this within the Allergy & Immunology sub-specialty clinic at Banner-North, and even in more Banner Health locations in Tucson, AZ for both patients and physicians.