Nurse Practitioner Internship
Alyssa Kate Maxwell
Abstract
Over the past four months I have spent a portion of my day shadowing a nurse
practitioner and working with her to further our understanding on patient anxiety as well
as the possible solutions to it. I chose to research this career because of my interest in the
healthcare field. Being a nurse practitioner provides a variety of opportunities for those in
the medical field and has a reliable projected job growth. In order to achieve the status of
“nurse practitioner”, one must complete the credits and testing required to obtain a
Master’s in the science of nursing. This amount of schooling can be expensive, but it is
easily repaid by the hardy salary and benefits that are a part of the career. After diving into
personal exercises and activities, I discovered that I have many personal attributes that
make this career a good choice for me. My empathy and communication skills are two key
characteristics that will help me to be a successful nurse practitioner. In addition to having
a personal drive for success in this professional field, I also have several motivators in my
life. Some of these motivators include family, friends, and overall interest. My interest in
this part of the healthcare field is what helped me to land on the topic of patient anxiety
for this project. Patient anxiety is most commonly visible in signs such as heart rate and
blood pressure. As my mentor and I worked to understand this form of anxiety, we also
worked to solve it. The solution that we both agreed had the highest probability of
calming patients was the addition of classical music in the exam rooms. Half of our testing
population was examined in the rooms with music and half remained in a room with no
music. After completing data collection it was clear that the patients with music present in
their exam rooms had a twenty- seven percent decrease in number of patient with elevated
heart rate. I then used this information and stretched my learning into a training video.
This video included a background in regards to what patient anxiety actually is, who is
impacted by it, how to help it, and other important facts. To take my knowledge to the
next step, I then presented this training video to a small selection of employees at the
private practice I was a part of. All of the feedback I received for my video was positive
and the professionals were satisfied with the information they learned as well as the
presentation itself.
Introduction
As a part of my senior capstone project I have spent a few hours each week
working as an intern at a pediatric private practice. Spending my time here has
given me numerous opportunities to learn more about my future career and the
healthcare field in general. As I continued to work directly under my mentor, I
began to discover a topic that sparked an interest in me. I was curious about
what caused patients to be anxious while visiting the doctor’s office. This
curiosity then sparked other questions such as who is mainly impacted by this
fear and anxiety, how can it be eliminated, and how often does it occur? I
began to research the root causes of patient anxiety and discovered that the
main cause of this was least commonly a result of fearing the person who is
practicing the medicine. This anxiety is most commonly sprouted from a fear
of the unknown and possible diagnosis (Gould 2017). After coming to this
realization, my goal for my internship shifted to finding a way to help
minimize patient anxiety. I then went on to collect data and create an
informational video. This video will not only help to educate healthcare
professionals on the rapidly growing issue of patient anxiety, but it will also
help to start a conversation among these professionals about how to help
further minimize this fear that is found in a large majority of patients.
Contact
[name]
[organization]
[address]
[email]
[phone]
Paulette Allard
Harrison High School
Methods and Materials
As I began my journey to help minimize patient anxiety, I knew I had to
determine the most effective way to evaluate whether or not a patient is
dealing with this fearful feeling. After discussing this point with my mentor,
we decided to classify those patients with an elevated heart rate to be impacted
by patient anxiety, and those with normal or decreased heart rates to be
unaffected.
From that point forward, I dedicated my time to researching the best ways
to lower one’s heart rate. In attempt to minimize the amount of intervention I
made with each appointment, I decided to add a CD player to half of the exam
rooms. This CD player would play classical music at a soft level. Over the
course of two weeks I was able to visit with thirty patients. Fifteen of these
patients received a normal examination with no added music in their exam
room. The remaining fifteen patients were examined in a room with a CD
player projecting low volume classical music. All thirty of these patients had
their heart rate recorded before and after their appointments. By recording
these heart rates twice, I was able to see if there was any sort of decrease in
anxiety over the duration of the appointment.
Results
After the course of data collection was complete, there was a clear
difference in the heart rates between the two groups. The control group had a
forty seven percentage rate of patients with elevated heart rate. The second
group had a twenty percentage rate of patients with elevated heart rate. This
twenty seven percent drop was large enough to prove that the presence of
relaxing music can help to minimize patient anxiety. Conclusions
Discussion Looking back on the entirety of my project, I feel as though I have learned
an immense amount of things about what it takes to be a nurse practitioner and
what it takes to help minimize patient anxiety. One of the main qualities
necessary to being a nurse practitioner is being able to properly care for your
I then took my data and education to the next level. I was able to compile patients and their well-being. Whether this has to do with their actual
all of my newfound information into a five minute video that informed symptoms or just their fear of the doctor’s office, it is a nurse practitioner’s job
healthcare professionals about what patient anxiety is and one of the ways that to help make everyone feel comfortable and protected. Patient anxiety is a
it can be minimized. This training video will not only help me in my future growing problem that needs to be focused upon in the training of future
professional years, but it will also help the lives of the patients that all of these healthcare professionals; I hope that my informational video will help to
healthcare professionals influence. After benefiting personally from this initiate these types of conversations in the healthcare workplaces around Cobb
training video, I decided to take m project up one final notch. I presented this County and the greater spectrum of Georgia.
five minute clip to three other employees at the private practice and had them
fill out evaluation sheets as if to “grade” the content in the video.
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