Blog 26: Senior Project Reflection

1) Positive Statement

• The thing that I am most proud of in my senior project is that I completed all of my hours at my mentorship event though my mentor was on maternity leave for more then four months. 

2) Questions to Consider

• a) After completing my two hour presentation and assessing what I did, the assessment that I would give my self would be a P. 

• b) The assessment that I would give my overall senior project would be a P. 

3) What Worked

• The thing that worked for me in my senior project was that I had the necessary research and resources to help me answer my essential question and I had enough information to back up the answers with evidence. 

4) What didn't work

• If I could go back in time and change one thing from my senior project it  would be completing my first set of monitorship hours. I was so busy with other stuff going on with school and outside activities that I fell behind and I had to make the hours up in less time. This became stressful for me and after that I was always doing the amount of weekly hours that I needed to do to stay on track.

5) Finding Value

• My senior project has been helpful to me in my future endeavors because It has allowed me to explore the medical field and shadow doctors. This has made me come to the conclusion that I would like to pursue the medical field in the future and focus on working with teenagers. Also my mentorship has given me more experience with patient contact which will help me when I am in the ,medical field.

2-Hour Presentation

I finally finished all of the different activities for my two hour presentation. I am some what relieved, but I am also nervous about the actual presentation. I feel as if audience will feel a little uncomfortable about the topic and I do not want to make the presentation awkward. But I will just try my best and hopefully the take the information seriously because they are in the age group that has the highest STD rates, meaning they need to be more cautious about contracting an STD.

Plan B Pill

I went to the store the other day to buy condoms for my presentation and while in the area of the store where they sell contraceptives I saw that they also sell the Plan B Pill. I was amazed when I asked one of the workers if people need a prescription to buy it and she said no. I then proceeded to ask her how many times can a person go in to buy the plan B pill and she said as many times as they want to. This means that girls can use this as a form of birth control, which is not safe because using it to many times can be dangerous to your body.  The pill should only be used no more than four times or so in ones life time according to my mentor.

2-Hour Video

I choose this video for my two hour presentations, because it is a great example of a media source that parents can use to start conversations with their child about sex education. Which can lead to conversations about STDs and Birth control.

http://pollystreaming.com/American-Dad-Season-1-Episode-9-A-Smith-In-The-Hand_v12734#

GYT

I found a website called "Its your sex life" and it has a campaign called Get Yourself Testes, it is for youth to get tested for STDs. The website provides pdf files of posters, stickers and pamphlets for the Get Yourself Tested campaign. I printed one of the pamphlets for my two hour presentations, I made one pamphlet for every person in my presentations so that they are aware of where they can go get tested for STDs. The pamphlet also gives information in regards to Chlamydia, the most common STD.

Birth Control

While shadowing my mentor physician assistant Emma Cook at the family practice, I watched her do a pap-smear on a young lady. After that we began to talk about pap-smears and she informed me that after the first time you have sexual intercourse no matter what age you need to get a pap-smear within one year. We then began to discuss the different birth controls, and I asked her about patient confidentiality with parents and minors. She informed me that patients as young as twelve years old can go into the clinic and request birth control, without their parents content. Also is the parent goes to ask if their child had been prescribed birth control, they are not allowed to release that information to them.

My mentor informed me that the birth control pill needs to be taken every single day, at the same time every day to keep the women's hormone levels the same. This is the most common type of birth control.

This is the second most common type of birth control, it is birth control in an injection form. Women only need to get the injection once every three months. 

Posters

Finally today I picked up my posters from kinkos. The posters are for my two hour presentation, that are about STDs and have some facts on them aout STD prevention.

This is an example of one of the posters, I did not make them. I found them online. These are like some of the posters that I have seen.  

New Mentorship Office

This is one of the new offices in the new family practice location. They changed location because they had to many patients and the other location was to small.  

This is where the medical assistants work. Here they do their computer work and process the urine samples and finish their paper work. 

This is one of the new exam rooms in the new office. The rooms are a little bigger than the previous rooms and there are more rooms. There are six exam rooms. 

Mentorship Experience

My mentor Emma Balderas Cook is on a maternity leave, for about six months. She left in february because she was almost due, in the end of february she gave birth to a baby girl. Even though my mentor has been gone for three months, I have still been able to learn things at the clinic. I have been allowed to shadow the medical assistant since my mentor was not there. While shadowing I encountered many different patients that would not allow me to observe them in their room with the doctor. Although this was frustrating I still had a good experience.

Blog 25: Mentorship

Literal

• Stephanie Gamboa: Office Manager at Cora Med, (909) 865-5777 
• Mentor is Emma Cook: Leave of absence 
• Tiffany Ramirez: Foothill Presbyterian Hospital, (626) 915-6237

Interpretive

• The most important thing that I have gained from this experience is that I have learned how to communicate on a professional level. This experience has given me the opportunity to work with doctors, nurses and patients at both my mentors office and at Foothill Presbyterian. By working with the doctors, nurses, and patients I have learned how to communicate with each person in a different way. I learned that you do not communicate with the doctors in the same way that you  would with a patient. This was especially true at the hospital, because many times the patients are very ill and I have to communicate on a simpler level with them. This is very important to me because communication is used in almost every part of your life. Knowing how to communicate with people is a positive characteristic and it will help get you through life. 

Applied

• Through the time that I have spent at my mentorship I have been given many tasks. I have helped send letters to patients for follow up appointments. I have also shadowed my mentor Physician Assistant Emma Cook. My essential question is "What is the best way to promote STD prevention in youth?" The experience of shadowing in the doctors office has helped me answer my Essential Question because I was allowed to interact with patients which has allowed me too see how doctors promote STD prevention in youth. I learned that the doctors start promoting STD prevention at the age of about fifteen, or at the age when youth state that they are sexually active. They can legally start giving birth control with out parent consent at the age of twelve. This then helped me choose my first answer as my best answer. Which is, "Its is best to start informing youth from an early age about the consequences of being sexually active." The experiene at my mentorship helped me understand this answer in a better way. 

Planned Parenthood

On March 6, 2013 I went to Planned Parenthood to obtain information in regards to how they approach youth about sexually transmitted diseases. I went into the clinic, and there was a process that I had to take in order to obtain the information I was seeking. The secretary informed me that I would have to call the main office in Los Angeles. So I did, I called and they never responded back to me. So I went into the Planned Parenthood clinic again, and this time I went in as a patient. I filled out all the paper work, like if I was there to get tested for HIV. I was then called in by a nurse. When she took me in she asked me if I had any questions and I did. I  had a whole list of questions for her. I asked her questions in regards to how they promote getting tested and about the youth that go in  to get tested, she answered them as best as she could. I then got a better understanding of the Planned Parenthood goal. She was very passionate about the topic. She then tested me and I came out negative. I decided to get tested to experience what other youth experience when they decide to get tested. I realized that going to get tested is not as easy as it looks. By doing all the research about STD prevention and promotion I thought it would be easy to go in and ask to be tested. But after I went in to go get tested and I experienced it first hand. I found that it was very uncomfortable and awkward, I also talked to a few teens in the clinic and they also confirmed that it was awkward for them. They said it took a lot of courage for them to actually step into the clinic. I asked the teens that I talked to about how they had heard about the testing here at Planned Parenthood and they said through their sex ed class in school. This made me happy to know that the school program had encouraged some youth to go get tested. 

Blog 24: Exit Interview Questions

1) What is your essential question?  What is the best answer to your question and why?

• My essential question is "What is the best way to promote STD prevention in youth." The best answer to my essential question is that "It is best to start informing youth from an early age about the consequences of being sexually active." This is the best answer to my EQ because according to an articleResearch Facts and Findings more than seven percent of youth have had sexual intercourse before the age of thirteen. This research is very significant because, it means that there is a very young population engaging in sexual intercourse and they are at risk of contracting an STD. All youth need to be informed about the consequences of being sexually active before the age of thirteen, this includes informing them about STDs. Also it is very important to educate youth before they reach the age of fifteen, because youth ages 15-24 have the highest STD rates. This is according to Effective HIV and STD Prevention Programs for Youth. 

2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

• The process that I took to arrive at this answer is that I started volunteering at my mentorship. Throughout  the entire time there, I observed many teens go into the Family Practice where I volunteer. Many of them were going into the office to be tested for an STD. The teens going in for these tests looked very young, and when I asked the medical assistant she informed me that most of them were no older than sixteen. This then made me gain an interest in learning about STDs in youth. I later researched STDs and found that they are most prevalent in youth ages 15-24. Even though they only make up twenty five percent of the sexually active population. Throughout my entire research I kept on encountering this fact, which made realize that it is very important to inform them about STDs before the age of fifteen. I then went to my mentor and asked talked to her about the facts I had found, she informed me that girls can go into the doctors office at the age of twelve and ask for birth control, and on a daily basis she gives young girls birth control. Thus this all lead me to me answer, "It is best to start informing youth from an early age about the consequences of being sexually active." 

3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

• The first problem that I faced was that my topic of family medicine was to broad, there were to many different topics within it. I had no idea what I wanted to focus on, so I resolved the problem by going to my mentor Physician Assistant Emma. I informed her about the problem I faced and she talked to me about the different topics that were with in the Family Practice topic. She informed me that the two topics I might be interested in were disease promotion and disease prevention. 
• The second problem that I encountered was that I could not find different research in regards to programs being implemented into schools. I had only found research in regards to programs being implemented, but I could not find the programs actual name. I resolved this by going on the Center for Disease Control website and looking up programs. This then lead me to find a few programs that were implemented into schools and that were successful. 

4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

• The first most significant source is Effective HIV and STD Prevention Programs for Youth, because it gave me information in regards to successful STD programs for youth.
• The second program I that  helped me answer mt essential question was an article called Research Facts and Findings. That article helped me because it gave me shocking facts in regards to statistics on STD rates. 

5) What is your product and why?

• My product is that I gained communication skills, because I had to communicate with many of the office employes on a daily basis. I had to communicate with them to ask them questions about the work i was doing for that day or if I needed help with my senior project. They were all willing to help me with anything I needed. 

Blog 23: 2014 Interview

1.  Who did you interview and what house are they in?

• I interviewed Samantha C. Cooper, she is in West. 

2.  What ideas do you have for your senior project and why?

• She is interested in pursuing Military Law Enforcement ship, or Military Law Enforcement Officer ship for her senior project. She is interested in this field because she has a big military family background. Her father was in the Vietnam War. Also her younger sister would like to go into the same field.

3.  What do you plan to do for your summer 10 hour mentorship experience?

• For her summer ten hour mentorship experience she plans on shadowing her fathers friend, who works in the intelligence field. 

4.  What do you hope to see or expect to see in watching the 2013 2-hour presentations?

• In watching the 2-hour presentations she hopes to see similar topics, about the military. She expects to see background information and activities. 

5.  What questions do you have that I can answer about senior year or senior project (or what additional information did you tell them about senior year or senior project)?

• Question: What advice can you give me in regards to the senior project?
• When it comes to the senior project, I would have to say to keep up with all the deadlines because if you don't you will fall behind tremendously. I would also have to say to keep up with the required hours, so that your will not become stressed with them at the end of the year.
• Question: What can you tell me in regards to the actual 4-core classes?
• The teachers rarely give you homework. Each teacher has there own class work, it is very important to keep up with the class work and try to finish it in class. 

Blog 22: Final Three Column Chart

Here is the link:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4z6UUMNQsEXM0paVGtPYmZHUzQ/edit?usp=sharing

Blog 21: Indépendant Component 2

Literal:

• a) I, Jazmin Morales, affirm that I have completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.
• b) The source that helped me complete my independent component was
• c) Log “Independent Component 2” located on the side of Blog
• d) During the time that I was at my mentors I worked on many things. I mailed out letters to many patients that needed to come in for a follow up due to their blood work. I organized the doctors I also shadowed the medical assistant Amber Razo and watched her process patients. I also watched her process blood and urine samples; though I could not do it myself she guided me through the steps and explained what was being done. Through this I learned how necessary it is to gain the patients trust and how important it is to ask them questions about their health history.

Interpretive:

This is where I would sit when the patient would not give me permission to go into their exam room. I wait for the medical assistant Amber to finish collecting information from the patient.

This machine checks patients urine samples to see if their pH, Nitrite, Leukocytes, Glucose and Ketone levels were normal. It also checks to see if blood is present. Many times teens would go complaining of a Urinary Tact infection, and Amber would run their urine in this machine. I was not allowed to run their samples but I would watch her. Many times the teens that were sexually active were the ones that had the UTI. 

These strips check for the same things that the machine above checks for, but it is not as accurate. 

This is the list that I had to highlight patients names if they were on another list that was for a follow up appointment. I had to mail out letters to them. 

This is Stephanie Gamboa, I would report to her every time I would go in to do hours, since my mentor is on maternity leave. I would also help her when she needed me to do things. 

This is the medical assistant Amber, which I shadowed for a few days to learn the procedure for when a teen comes in with concerns of an STD.

Applied:

• The way that this independent component helped me with my senior project was that it helped me answer one of my Essential Questions. I saw my first answer actually being enforce. My first answer was that, It is better to start informing youth from an early age about the consequences of being sexually active. The Medical Assistant Amber, was asking a thirteen year old girl about her relationships. The girl responded saying that she had had three serious relationships. So Amber decided to ask the mother to step out and the mother agreed, sometimes the parents are persistent and they will not step out. After that I stepped out as well and when Amber returned she informed me about the responses that the girl had given her. She informed me that it was the young girls first time to this family practice, and she had never been given information in regards to birth control. So Amber informed her about the birth control and asked her if she would like the doctor to prescribe her a prescription and the young girl said not at this time. But she was very relieved that she could come in and get it at any time without her mother knowing. She was comfortable enough to talk to amber and ask her questions, in which were relayed to the doctor to answer. This proves, that youth need to be informed about the consequences of being sexually active before they actually become sexually active. This girl was only thirteen and had never been informed about how she could obtain birth control, yet she had been in three relationships. 
• 
  

Blog 20: Three Column Chart First Draft

3 Column Chart: First Draft

Blog 19: Senior Project and ESLRs

1.  What ESLR have you excelled in most in your senior project? 

• I think I have excelled in the Effective Learner. 

2.  Please explain why you think you have excelled in this ESLR.

• I believe I have excelled in Effective Learner category because I manage what I do with my mentor, I do not need others to tell me what I need to do for my senior project. Then I incorporate what I have learned at my mentorship into my senior project components. 

3.  Provide evidence from your senior project to support your claim (evidence is a photo of something you are doing, photo of something you made, etc).

This is a photo of a three year old patient that my mentor is treating for Pink Eye. My mentor is talking to him about germs and how your not supposed to share drinks and etc with others. This taught me that it is important to tech children about that stuff from an early age and when they are older you can then talk to them about other stuff like STDs.

Blog 18: 2-Hour Meeting Answer #3

1.  What is the best way to promote STD prevention in youth?

2.  The third answer to my essential question is that parents need to use the media to make connections between that and sex talks.
3.Three details to justify my third answer

• Not all children or teens feel comfortable talking to their parents about sex and STDs. 
• There needs to be something that makes them more open to talking about the subject. Like something that they like to watch, then the parent can make a connection between the two and start the conversation. 
• Build a good line of communication from early on. If parents are not open to talking about sex or STD protection wheb kids are young then the youth will be less likely to seek out the parents when they are older and have questions.
•  The parents may use the media if they feel more comfortable to start the conversation. But they need to let the youth lead the conversation. 

4.  My 40th research article "Kids Health" helped me prove my third answer.
5.  The next thing I plan to study is different techniques used to promote STD prevention in youth. I plan on doing this because teens can hear information about STDs but they need to be interested in it or hear it in an interesting way in order to actually learn from the information given to them.  

Blog 17: Fourth Interview Questions

1) What is the best way to promote STD prevention in youth?
2) What are some ways STD programs can be implemented in schools?
3) Where have you seen STD prevention promoted?
4) If STD prevention is implemented in schools, in what grade do you believe it should start being done?
5) When given facts about STDs, who will teens listen to the most?
6) How can teens you reduce the risk of contracting an STD?
7) When children are at a young age, what should be taught to them in regards to STDs?
8) At what age should information about STDs be given?
9) How else can teens protect themselves against STDs, if they are already using condoms?
10) What needs to be done, in order for a school to implement STD prevention programs?
11) If abstinence is the best way to reduce the risk of contracting an STD, then why are so many teens still contracting them?
12) There are many ways people can contract STDs, so what other things should be talked about besides abstinence?
13) If schools do not incorporate STD prevention into their curriculum, then how will teens be informed about that?
14) At what age should teens get tested for STDs? And how often?
15) How should STD prevention be implemented in the teens lives?
16) What are different techniques that schools can use to get teens to attend the program?
17) If teens choose to be sexually active, why do parents get to choose whether or not the teen attends the STD prevention program?
18) Based on your knowledge of STDs, how do you know if you have one? And how do you go about treating it?
19) When talking to teens about STDs, what else should they be informed about?
20) How can the schools reduce the spread of STDs amongst their students?

Blog 16: 2- Hour Meeting Answer #2

1) What is the best way to promote disease prevention in youth in family medicine.
2) The second answer to my essential question is that teachers need to be educated on the different types of diseases so that they can then incorporate what they have learned into the curriculum. 
3) Three details to justify my second answer

• Each state needs to pass a law and policies on STD education, in order to allow teachers to teach youth about this topic. 
• Each state should come up with a training program to help educate teachers on the HIV and STDs. This will allow the teachers to inform the youth with accurate information in regards to the diseases. 
• Schools have direct contact with more than 56 million students daily, for at least 6 hours a day. For about thirteen critical years of their social, physical and intellectual development. 

4) The CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health helped me prove my second answer. 

5) I plan to continue my study of answer 2 by researching more programs that incorporate this method into their schools curriculum. 

Blog 15: Independant Component 2 Plan Approval

1) I plan on continuing my service learning hours with my mentor and learning more about the STDs in teenagers.
2) I think my plan of continuing my mentorship hours will allow me to complete the 30 required hours because I shadow my mentor and do office work. They always allow me to do both, unless the patient does not allow me to go in the room.
3) My independant component relates to my working EQ because I will gain knowledge in regards to my topic and I will probably see first hand encounters with patients that are going in for STD related illnesses.

Blog 14: Independant Component 1

Literal

• a) I, Jazmin Morales, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.
• b) Stephanie Gamboa: Office Manager at Cora Med, (909) 865-5777 
• Mentor is Emma Cook
• c) Log is on the side.
• d) I continued to do my hours at with my mentor. There I organized all the patients charts for 2012. I also learned how to take patients blood pressure be hand, without the use of a machine. I followed the doctor and through that process I learned how they approach patients when it comes to disease prevention. I also organized paper work for the doctor.

Interpretive 

• This picture shows a patient getting their blood pressure checked. Throughout the time, I watched many patients get there blood pressure checked. Then i would practice on the nurses. It took me many trials to finally get it right. This is the first thing that all patients get checked before they are seen by the doctor. 

• In this picture the patient is getting their weight checked. It is a part of disease prevention because children need to be on the right track with their weight. This will benefit them in the future when they are teens and if on the correct path from an early age they will reduce the risk of getting  a disease. 

• Here my mentor is talking to the teen about their medical history. I could not take a picture of the teen because they did not want to have their identity revealed. P.A. Emma ask them many questions in regards to being sexually active. Here is where I learned how to approach a teen about their sexual activity and how to give them advice. 

• Here is a picture of urine samples, I watched the nurses perform pregnancy test on them. The nurses told me that many teen girls come in with symptoms of being pregnant but deny that they are, so they still perform the pregnancy test to find out if they are or not. During the time that I was volunteering I saw many teenagers go in without their parents. 

• Here is a picture of my mentor writing a prescription for birth control for a teenager. The teenager has been sexually active for over a year and usually has unprotected sex. So my mentor talked to her about the consequences and informed her that she can still contract and STD even while using the birth control. Some times the teenager would not allow me to go into the room because they were uncomfortable with me hearing what they were there for. So my mentor would tell me what occurred after the patient left. She would discuss with me their options and what she told them in regards to the reason for their visit. 

Applied

• This helped me understand the foundation of my topic because I got to see disease prevention taking place right in front of me. I understood it a little better, than when I just do research and read it. A specific example that helped me understand the importance of disease promotion in youth was when my mentor was telling me a story about a twelve or thirteen year old girl that was going out with an older teenager. He pressured her into having sex with him and she contracted an STD. She did not know the symptoms of STD's so when she went in for her yearly physical the doctor discovered that she had it. This shows me that even if a youth looks to young to be doing things that can put them in danger of contracting an STD. Its important to talk to them from an early age and inform them of the risks and consequences, I learned that the youngest age they prescribe birth control to is twelve years old. So basically its never to early to star talking about disease prevention. 

Blog 13: Rough Draft of 30 min Presentation

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4z6UUMNQsEXTFVxM2pZZUpmZXM/edit

Blog 12: Third Interview Questions

1) What is the best way to promote disease prevention in youth in family medicine?
2) What exactly is disease prevention?
3) In the family medicine practice what are there different approaches to disease prevention in youth?
4) How do you know when it is appropriate to approach a teen about disease prevention?
5) When promoting disease prevention are youth given facts or advice on how to stay protected?
6) How do doctors approach youth about disease prevention?
7) Why abstinence the best way to promote disease prevention?
8) What is the most common method used to promote disease prevention?
9) What do doctors do if youth do not want to listen to the information that is being given to them about disease prevention?
10) If a doctor sees that a youth is having trouble in school or with their parents and due to that they are rebelling and becoming involved in behaviors that are putting them at risk for diseases. What can a doctor do in this situation?
11) Besides promoting disease prevention in the family practice is there somewhere else that you guys refer youth too, when they need more information? Where?

Blog 11: Mentorship 10 hours check

1) I am doing my mentorship at a family practice in Pomona.
2) Stephanie Gamboa
3) 21 total hours
4) In the ten hours of service I helped organize a lot of paper work from 2012. I also organized the doctors daily schedules which os what I am using for my science project.

Photos of Mentor and Family Practice

• This is the outside of the family practice where I do my mentorship hours. The family practice is located in Pomona. 

• This is my Mentor physician assistant Emma Cook. She has been a physicians assistant for four years.

• This is the work area for the nurses and the doctors. I also do some of my work here, when it involves paperwork. 

• This is one of the exam rooms in the family practice.