Project Title: Debunking the Medical Field
Essential Question(s):
[Delete and add your essential question(s). Why is it that some people have almost unlimited medical care when others have none?
Statement of Purpose
For my Senior Project, I will gain an understanding of the medical field combining hands-on experiences with reading medical literature, interviewing doctors, and listening to medical ethics lectures.
Overview: Describe your topic and project to the committee.
My project is going to be a mix of hands-on experience, and research. For hands-on experience, I an going to be taking classes to get EMT certified. In doing this, I could get real world experience in a way that I cannot do through an internship. I looked into EMT licensing and found that they offer in person and online classes during the pandemic so it would be possible to achieve this. I am hoping to be able to get my EMT certification through an accelerated course during the time of senior project. At the same time, I am planning on learning about the medical inequalities side through reading, interviews, and lectures. Through these narratives, I am hoping to learn about intersectionality within the medical field. Throughout history, there have been many instances of inequality in health care from racism to classism. It is important to unpack these issues in order to fully understand the problems within the health care system we have today. New problems in our world present new ethical dilemmas; It will be interesting to see how our attitudes towards patient care have changed after experiencing a world wide pandemic. It is also interesting to consider ethical dilemmas that come with issues such as global warming: as medicine is a field that requires many resources. I am hoping to gain a well rounded understanding of these issues and see how they are reflected in the field.
This project will challenge me because this is a very broad topic. There are many ways that I can approach the idea of “Medical Ethics”. At this point, I am planning on doing a lot of general research and finding the aspects of the topic that I am most interested in. I took a medical literature class as an 11th grade elective, so I am planning on going back to some of those resources, and building off of the things that I learned.
4Cs-
- Courage- I am going to incorporate courage in taking an adult education class and working in the field as an EMT
- Citizenship- I am going to incorporate citizenship in considering issues of inequality.
- Critical thinking- I am going to incorporate critical thinking in working out difficult ethical dilemmas.
- Creativity- I am going to incorporate creativity in writing about my own thoughts in my own medical narrative journal.
How will you measure your success?
Key learning goals:
- Get EMT certification
- Gain an understanding of how the medical system is racially biased
- Gain an understanding of how the medical system is biased by class
- Gain an understanding of how wealth is distributed in the medical field (weather by the government or private run hospitals)
- Understand my place in the medical system. What I can do to make a positive impact.
Resource List
Consider this the bibliography of Senior Project. What resources have you identified to push your understanding? List publications, institutions, media, books, websites, people with whom you have connected, etc that relate to your project. Include the book you will be reading.
Books that I am going to read:
Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Health Care -Dayna Bowen Matthew
Understanding Health Inequalities and Justice: New Conversations Across Disciplines -Mara Buchbinder, Rebecca L. Walker, Michele R. Rivkin-Fish
The Code Breaker -Walter Isaacson
Medical Apartheid -Harriet A. Washington
I will also supplement my knowledge with online resources and lectures.
Daily Plan & Schedule
General outline of how I will spend my time:
- Week 1 (4 /5)
- EMT course
- Gather materials and contacts (reach out and schedule interviews)
- Week 2 (4 /12)
- EMT course
- Begin conducting interviews and doing research
- Week 3 (4 /19)
- EMT course
- Continue conducting interviews and doing research
- Week 4 (4 /26)
- EMT course
- Continue conducting interviews and doing research
- Week 6 (5 /3)
- EMT course
- Continue conducting interviews and doing research
- Week 7 (5 /10)
- EMT course
- Finalize interviews and research
- Week 8 (5/ 17)
- EMT course ends May 20th
- Begin preparing interviews and research for evening
- Week 9
- Preparing for begin preparing for the Senior Project evening
Documentation Plan
How I am going to document my work:
I am planning on documenting my work through an interactive slideshow/website platform. I am going to be keeping a journal of my thoughts as I work through this difficult topic, and I am planning on organizing both factual statistical information as well as my own thoughts into this slideshow. That way, a viewer can click around and learn more about different aspects of my project. I am going to figure out the best platform for this website through research/online videos about how to make an interactive presentation.
Material Needs
N/A
Backup Plan
If something goes wrong – an internship falls through, an outside circumstance makes your project no longer feasible, you find that your project is not answering your essential question – what will you do? Ideal backup plans rely on known resources and only a single essential question.
If the EMT class gets cancelled, I will continue my project solely with the resources and lectures that I have. I will make it more centered on the ethics and use my interviews in replacement of my own hands on experiences.