This blog will describe my adventure as a student nurse entering into the world of scientific research. We’re talking about the alphabet soup world of biochemical physiology, where new discoveries are named the WXYZ-21 pathway, instead of after the last name of the discoverer. These kinds of discoveries are furthering our understanding of how the human body functions. They let us understand how and why the cells we are composed of carry out their minute activities.
As a junior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a third semester School of Nursing student, I’ve taken two introductory Chemistry courses, one introductory course covering Microbiology, and two introductory Physiology classes—so how can I contribute towards that sort of advanced research? Most of the studies are done by scientists who hold a PhD, or at the very least a Masters degree in a scientific field.
The answer to this question is found in the fact that research can’t happen only in a laboratory.
At some point when studying the systems and cells of the human body it is necessary to study live people. Often the people researchers need to examine for specific questions suffer from a pathological condition (damage relating to disease or injury) and may be hospitalized under very stressful circumstances. It is under these conditions that a nurse, even a student nurse, may be beneficial to hard-core scientific research.
Nurses are comfortable communicating with stressed patients, and more importantly are trained to make the patients more comfortable and less stressed. In addition, nurses have a natural role as patient educators—we are practiced at bridging the gap between scientific jargon and layman’s terms. Identifying chemical signals inside of human tissue cells may not be part of our role, but being able to describe the activities and importance of those signals, in layman’s terms, to a patient who may be a potential study participant is.
In the next blog entry I’ll describe how I got involved in a specific study and what that study is investigating. As a hint- if you want to read ahead, look up "muscle atrophy!"
