-: My name is Sierra Trost and currently
for a living I have two jobs;
I work at The U of M Twin Cities as a Research Assistant
in the Families in Long-Term Care Projects
through the School of Nursing.
And I also work at a hospital in the Emergency
Department as a Medical Scribe.
Yeah, so a typical day is I get paired
with a provider everyday so if a shift is noon to eight
that's what the provider's shift is as well.
So I'll go there, meet up with the provider
I see all the patients with them
and then I write down history of present illnesses
sort of what the background story for the patient is.
And then I also clean up their charts so their medical
history is their current medications,
if they're a smoker or non-smoker.
So I kind of go through it with the provider
it's not the provider goes and comes
and tells me and I just write it down.
Like I get to see the interaction which I really enjoy
I get to see if, how the patients respond
to certain things that a provider does,
how providers respond to some things that patients will do.
And so you go through with that and then you also
at the very end write down it's called
the "Impression and Plan" but it's basically
like what the patient has and then how the Doctor
is going to either treat them or request follow-up.
So that is very helpful for learning
sort of like just how to diagnose
and just the various things that I would
have never seen if I hadn't been a Scribe.
But what we do in the Families in Long-Term Care Projects
is we aim to alleviate the stress of caregiving
for someone with Alzheimer's 'cause a lot of responsibility
and a lot of stress comes with caring
for someone with memory loss, and so we aim to alleviate
that with our projects and there are multiple projects
we're working on right now: there are remote health
technology where it's like a sensor system set up
in the house of the person with memory loss
and it just sends alerts to the caregiver's phone
if they've been out of bed at midnight
or if they've been outside at an odd hour of the day
so it just helps them with that, that's one of 'em.