Since our initial shadowing on October 29th, we have communicated with both Synapse correspondents and our Children’s Hospital contacts consistently. On November 17th, the Tetradores shadowed a team of physicians on their morning rounds of the NICU. During this time, we were able to witness the team move from patient to patient throughout the several pods of the NICU. Prior to the rounds, we sat in during a huddle meeting where the five teams of physicians met to discuss the location and condition of each of the patients of the NICU. During this meeting, a large portion of the time was taken up by the planning of the moving of these babies to procedures. On that given day, 10% of the babies in the NICU were being moved for one reason or another.As the rounds started, the team was accompanied by two cardiologist that saw the babies that were hospitalized due to heart conditions. Many physicians on the team voiced the importance of tracking these patients, in particular, due to the need for the higher number of health care providers that visit them.
Looking ahead, we have scheduled a meeting with our project advisors from NICU to discuss plans for the coming semester. At this meeting, we plan to express all of our thoughts from the initial shadowing and schedule more shadowing and meeting times for the coming semester. We plan to shadow extensively in January and February to become completely acquainted with the NICU.
With our new perspective of the details surrounding our design project, we have been able to lay out a set of milestones specific to accomplishing our goal of installing and acquiring data of babies’ movement within Vanderbilt’s NICU. Gaining a better mindset was made possible through our shadowing experience and also through conversations with both doctors and nurses in the NICU. Communicating with the physicians also helped us in determining our potential sensor placement, an important decision to optimize data acquisition while not hindering an equipment used by the nurses or doctors. These important factors have helped us in preparing for our next steps with this project next semester.