There were many different training sessions and educational seminars/classes that I had to attend over the summer in order to be prepared for the internship position. I completed an online training course through UB and CITI that entailed a lot of procedural content regarding getting a research project approved and keeping it in compliance with the requirements of institutional review boards. It also covered informed consent and patient confidentiality. Honestly, the bulk of the material covered in that class outside of the informed consent and patient material was relatively unrelated to what I actually do at the clinic, but it could be very useful in my future academic endeavors.
Once my CITI course was completed, I had to attend an hour and a half long class at UB South Campus that went over the same material from the online course. It helped to explain everything that was online in a much simpler manner. There were also various handouts that they gave out as well.
There were a couple of lectures that I attended at the clinic. The first of which was a presentation that Dr. Lackner did to the staff that went over the purposes of the study and the treatment plans that the participants would be going through. There was also a guest lecturer from China that gave a presentation on her research (coping strategies for patients with IBS). Her lecture also encompassed some more basic aspects of psychology like experiment and variable types. I found this very helpful because it started off with things I had learned in my courses here at school, and it helped me understand how her research was conducted.
The second information lecture I attended was more focused on data entry. It concerned SPSS and was really geared more for the statisticians, but Dr. Lackner and Rebecca (the project coordinator) felt it was appropriate that I gain an understanding for what goes on behind the scenes.
Overall, throughout the course of summer, I was given opportunities to learn about the research and how it was conducted, but I did not begin training for my actual responsibilities until I started on August 30th at the beginning of the semester.

This week was a little hectic for me. I still did not know some of the other staff members so I had to be introduced to the rest of the people that I would be working with that I hadn’t met over the summer. Likewise, there was, at this point, nothing that I could really work on by myself. They gave me some posters and flyers to distribute in places that I felt appropriate, and I was given a workspace. They showed me how to access the files and databases on the computer, and I was given my own username and password for the system. The only thing I was able to do was go over a couple of patient forms with the graduate students there, and they showed me what to check and look for when going over the forms. Other than that, this week was really more about settling in and getting to know the people I would be working with.

This week was a relatively easy week as well given that the BMC was closed on Monday for Labor Day. As a result, I only had to come in on Wednesday. I got to fill out a request form for keys so that I can have a set of keys for the clinic, and I took the form down to the police station in the hospital (the police are in charge of keys there apparently…but “they are not a storage facility” – I say this because the policeman we talked to was very grumpy with us for some reason and made a real big deal about picking up the keys on time and that they are not responsible for “storing” our keys for u if we don’t pick them up. Everyone at the clinic got a big kick out of the whole ordeal).
Apart from that, I spent over an hour on the phone with UB tech support in an effort to try and get a username for myself through UB (as the BMC is a UB-associate). After much hassle, I was successful, and I was given a username for UB and also for the Frontier Science website. Our own tech support at the BMC also had to help us install eData and Therapist Helper on my computer, and Rebecca showed me how to use these programs to enter data from patient forms and schedule appointments for both the patients and the doctors. That was about all I had time to learn/do this week.

This week I was shown how to assemble pre-treatment patient binders. These binders are filled with information regarding the patient and also contain numerous surveys, health care facts, and the informed consent form. The surveys are mailed out to the participant for their completion at home, and the remaining material is filled out with the treating psychologist when the patient comes to the BMC. There are two types of data forms that the participants fill out: flips forms (scantron) and hand-entered forms. However, before they can be filled out, their patient ID numbers and the information about the BMC (ie. institution code, week number, etc.) must first be filled out by a staff member. So, I was shown what to fill in for that as well. After working on some binders and getting the mail-out forms put together, the graduate students showed me where the mail room is in the main hospital, and we mailed out the forms. We also checked to see if my keys were ready yet… they were not… and so the police station/storage facility jokes went on.

This week I was taught how to assemble treatment binders. These binders vary from pre-treatment binders because they contain all the data/forms completed throughout the 10 weeks of treatment that the patient receives. The binders are much larger as a result. However, although they are large, the actual assembly of them is relatively simple and monotonous. I also worked with Dr. Radziwon in that I helped review his patient’s forms as they were completed during that patient’s visit. Essentially I just go through them to make sure everything is filled out and that no mistakes were made on his part. The most exciting part of this week was that I was finally issued my keys. The policemen were less than kind about giving them to me… I don’t know why they’re so grumpy… Lastly, I was issued my ECMC ID card as well.

After being shown how to use eData, this week I was finally able to do some data entry by myself. Honestly, it is much easier to do when someone does it with you because they can just read off the numbers you have to enter as opposed to looking at the numbers and then back at the computer and so forth. Surprisingly, I prefer the hand entered forms to the flips forms because they’re a lot more straightforward when it comes to entering them. All you do is press the buttons for the appropriate numbers. For flips forms you have to scan them in, then review the notepad file for them to make sure all the numbers are there, then get them into SPSS, then export them to Frontier… it’s a mess, and a lot easier to mess up to say the least. I also continued making pre-treatment binders this week.

I sat through several phone screens conducted by the other graduate students. Phone screens are the initial part of determining a patient’s eligibility for the study. Many are referred by their doctors, but some hear about us through advertising. Essentially, people call and we ask them a series of questions to determine whether or not their symptoms are in accordance with IBS symptoms. If someone seems eligible after the screen, we schedule him/her for an appointment at the BMC where they meet with a gastroenterologist and a psychologist.
Although I did not conduct the screens, I observed the other students do them and afterwards I was able to enter the data of eligible patients into the computer and schedule them using Therapist Helper.
I also spent a lot of time working with Dr. Krasner this week on putting together mail packets that contained information about the study that were sent out to local physicians and psychologists. The actual assembly was pretty boring, but Dr. Krasner was very interested in talking about my psych classes for the semester (particularly beh-mod). We spent some time talking about reinforcement, and I told her that I’d be taking abnormal psych next semester, and she said she had tons of stuff I could use if I ever needed help with a project. Dr. Krasner was really friendly and helpful, so making the mail packets didn’t turn out to be that bad.

This week was fun for me because I got to work with Dr. Lackner on some research regarding small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). He called me into his office, and he gave me the basic overview of the concept. Essentially, as the name suggests, an overgrowth of bacteria is present in the small intestine, causing increased bloating in people that have it. However, although bloating was a Rome I symptom of IBS, it is not a symptom of Rome II or III (the criteria currently used to diagnose IBS). So, Jeff had me do some literature searches and research on SIBO so that I could meet with him again and discuss what I thought about SIBO and how it is or isn’t related to IBS. He also had me review and critique a study that looked at how a drug called Rifaximin treated “IBS symptoms” due to SIBO. After meeting with him, I spent my time looking up articles and finding more information on the topic.
Most of this research was obviously more in accordance with what I have learned so far in my biology classes than my psych classes. Having the dual major I do helped make it possible for me to do this. Without the background I have in biology, I would not have been able to understand as much as I do about this particular topic. It’s nice to finally have an opportunity to integrate the two things I study at school in the real world.

There isn’t much to tell about this week. I spent the majority of my time putting together patient binders (pre-treatment and treatment) and entering data into eData. I was hoping I’d get to meet with Jeff again about the SIBO research but he was busy with patients. It may be a few more weeks before we get to discuss it further (he doesn’t need the info until December when he gives a talk about the subject).

This week was a relatively simple week because there were less phone screens and patient visits to document and enter data for. As a result, I spent the majority of my time constructing follow up binders for patients who would soon be finishing the study. These binders contain questionnaires that ask participants about their bowel symptoms post-treatment at different times (ie. after 3 months, 6 months, etc.). Essentially they are asked the same questions they were asked during baseline. As a result, the data can be analyzed to determine whether or not there was an improvement in their symptoms/life in general.

This week I got to do more patient form reviews for Dr’s. Krasner and Radziwon. Again, I simply look over the forms once the patients have filled them out to make sure that there were no mistakes on them. More often than not, patients make mistakes on the questions, so even though looking over the forms isn’t the most fun thing to do, it is pretty important. So far, I’ve found the most mistakes on the Concomitant Medications Log and the Comorbid Disease form. The Comorbid form has a lot of questions that people sometimes accidentally skip over.
Outside of working on the forms, I also entered more patients into Therapist Helper and eData and made more patient binders (as per usual). Essentially, whenever there is nothing else to do, I make binders. Rebecca has assigned me as the “go to guy” for binders.

I was only able to make it one day this week (I was not feeling well on the other). When I did come, there was not really much to do. We ran out of pre-treatment and treatment binders, and so the only thing for me to really do was to help Amanda, Tatyana, and Kathie work on scanning the Flips forms into SPSS.

This week I finally got to continue working on the SIBO research with Jeff. Now that I had done the research and literature searches and was familiar with the topic, Jeff asked me to make a PowerPoint presentation for him, as he would be presenting the information from the Rifaximin study in December. Obviously, I was very excited to be able to work on something like this with him. Not only was it a break from the otherwise routine things I had been doing the past few weeks, but it was also an opportunity to show Jeff that I could contribute to his research.
Things I included in the presentation were a background of the Rifaximin study, criterion for diagnosing IBS, outcomes of the study and implications for future research. The presentation will need some adjusting, of course, but Jeff seemed very pleased with it overall.

The shipment of treatment and pre-treatment binders finally arrived, so this week was like an assembly line of binder construction. Amanda, Tatyana and I worked on putting the binders together in the conference room. One of us would sort the flips forms, one would sort the hand entered forms, and the other would label and staple. I must admit, it is so much faster having a team of people work on those things than doing it by yourself.
The lack of binders was becoming a problem in that we kept getting new patients but didn’t have all the paperwork to keep up with them. Now we finally caught up with the influx of people.

This week was good in that I was asked to co-author an abstract for a poster that is being presented by Amada and Tatyana at a conference down in Washington D.C. The poster (and abstract) are about how past traumatic experiences contribute to the prevalence of symptoms in IBS patients. I got to meet with Jeff and the grad students to discuss the research, and then I was given the opportunity to write some of the abstract. Most of what I wrote was simply background material on what IBS and although I only got to write a few sentences, it felt good to be included in the research and discussion. Below is the beginning of the abstract that I wrote (along with the name of the paper):

Association of Perceived Severity of Trauma with Psychosocial and Physical Complaints in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome

This was the final week that I am “counting” for the practicum at the BMC. Obviously, I will still continue to work there after the semester is over, but given that finals are next week, this will be my final entry.
I spent my time this week working with Jeff to finalize the PowerPoint presentation for the SIBO research. We had more or less already finished the presentation previously, but we wanted to make sure that everything was precise and complete. Jeff is presenting this information to a group of physicians, so we had to take that into account. I must say that it does feel a little bit different preparing a presentation for a group of doctors than it does for say, an experimental psych class. The information is much more in depth, and a lot of the “basic” information you would normally include in a presentation for school is left out since the audience already knows that kind of information given their background.
As a result, I feel that working on this presentation with Jeff was a great learning experience for me. Not only did it bolster my PowerPoint and research skills, but it also gave me the opportunity to do something challenging and rewarding. While working on this project, I felt that what I was doing could possibly help people on their quest to overcoming IBS. It made it feel like my work contributed to something. Thus, it was something that I actually looked forward to working on, as opposed to the feelings I often get about the majority of my school projects. Not only that, but it was a scientific topic that actually stimulated me intellectually. I got to draw my own conclusions based on the research and work with Jeff to incorporate that into what he would be presenting. He seemed very interested in my opinions. This project was fun for me.
Overall, I love working at the BMC. The people are great, and it has been a really rewarding experience for me thus far, and I look forward to the work I will be doing there in the future.