Individual Reflection Paper

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In many hospitals around the world, patients in the adult Neurological ICU experience a low quality of life and the hospital staff has limited resources to monitor the patients. Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, patients are recovering in an environment where they have monotone environments and have limited movements. The patients can experience cases of depression, disrupted sleep cycles, or have longer recovery times. Recently, I was able to attend the Heads in The Game Research program at the University of Mississippi to research solutions to help TBI patients in the Neuro ICU. I worked alongside 6 undergraduate researchers with a partnership with Cspire and the UMMC, a hospital that has co-ops with the University of Mississippi. During my …show more content…

We finally settled on making a headband or cap that would monitor and improve sleep cycles. The headband would have 4 or more EEG sensors positioned on the front and back of the headband. The headband would also have some type of Bluetooth headphones to play white, brown, or pink noise to promote sleep. The headband would transmit the data via Bluetooth or Wifi to a companion app that would produce a user-friendly chart to show the sleep quality of the patient and ways to improve. After establishing what the headband would do, we looked into different materials and hardware for the device. We knew that the material for the headband would have to be soft, durable, bacteria-resistant, elastic, and waterproof. The headbands would have practical uses for doctors in the Neuro ICU and for patients to monitor themselves at …show more content…

Being a part of the research group gave me an inside look at what occurs in the field of research. Working alongside the undergraduate students taught me that not all solutions are viable. One of the experiences I learned the most from happened when my group ran into problems to get the final product. Developing a headband was not our first solution to help TBI patients. I learned that when your first or tenth solution does not work, you keep going until you find a solution that will be able to help others because that is the job of a researcher. Researchers seek solutions to help improve the quality of life for mankind and to broaden its horizons of the unknown. Being able to work with the research group was a great experience that taught me what it meant to be a researcher and the work that goes along with the

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