Discovering the Healthcare System – Jaquelin

DISCOVERING THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

For my Senior Project, I wanted to conduct an independent project on the healthcare system leading with the question: How are various healthcare facilities around the world dealing with COVID-19, and how can understanding this help make the healthcare system more fair and equitable for all? I specifically focused on, COVID-19, the United States healthcare system, response to COVID-19 in other countries, an overview of the system, hospitals/healthcare workers, people’s well-being, and solutions. I was fortunate in that, from my previous question before the pandemic occurred, I was able to get in touch with doctors and different clinics, so I had some prior knowledge before going into this. During this project I did tons of research, tackled and analyzed my time volunteering at Bellevue Hospital, and took two online courses on COVID-19.

Throughout these past six weeks, I feel like I dove and successfully answered my essential question to my liking. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a solution or answer to my question as it is opinionated and will always be up for debate. I am proud and confident from my work since everything that is happening right now is impermanent and in constant change. The reason why I chose this project was that I wanted to get a general idea of what medical studies could look like. When I go to college I plan on majoring in health science, and I was hoping for this project to push me to realize what I wanted to do in the future as well as just making me aware of our healthcare system. I also hoped to improve my academic ability as I would have learned something new that is outside of the LREI curriculum. Throughout this journey, I not only learned about different healthcare systems and how they run but also learned about myself. This included my college decision, what I want for my future, as well as learning and studying habits. 

I faced many challenges as well as successes. At some points of my project, I became bored with the topic I was researching or I couldn’t find new information. However, there were times where I took a break from a subject and started on something else and then went back to the original topic. During those breaks, updated news or new news appeared. However, I have grown from this project and learned that I can accomplish more than I believed too. This project made me aware of growing up, being independent, what does and doesn’t work, and time management. I thought researching would be exhausting since I would be constantly spending hours on end on a computer, however, once I got into the mood and vision, I planned for that day. My project influenced my vision of our country through a different lens. I originally thought the U.S had good ideas on certain concepts, but looking at the infrastructure of other countries made me change my opinion. We are behind. Throughout my project, I had to put my mindset in other perspectives and create a solution to fix the healthcare system that would benefit all. This is similar since it relates to the upcoming election as healthcare is a major political topic. 

As much as I loved my project and learning about new material, I don’t think I could create a career out of it. The topics that I was researching were quite intriguing however, I did notice that I got caught up on the biology of vaccines, immunoglobulins/antibodies, and coronavirus’. In the future, I feel like I would benefit from learning biology or biochem to help others. I knew that I liked working with people and helping out before this project, but I felt like one of the goals for the project was to step out of my comfort bubble and to take on the real world. Although I combined the two, I loved it.

Here is the full text/document of my project: