Blog #14|: Independent Component 1

✍ Literal 

• I, Zhailah Graza, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.   
• Kathleen Rivero helped me with volunteering at San Dimas Community Hospital and I am taking a Chemistry class at Cal Poly. 
• Independent Component 1 Hours Log
• Accrued hours volunteering in the ER at San Dimas Community Hospital and helped the staff with simple tasks and whatever they needed help with. For example, I would help the nurses by cleaning up the stations so new patients could come in.  I am taking a General Chemistry class at Cal Poly. We are learning the basics and foundation of Chemistry. For example, my professor started us off by memorizing the elements of the periodic table. We take it slowly and memorize a handful each week. We are also learning how to balance chemical equations (nomenclature), stoicheometry, etc. 

✍ Interpretive 

• Taking the chemistry class has been a good experience. Especially the hours put into studying and reviewing notes. I have only taken 2 quizzes so far, but the professor goes through a lot of content in a little amount of time, so keeping up with the pace of the class is important.  

          Volunteering in the hospital every saturday morning has been an enjoyable learning experience. Sometimes I just fall into the routine of working in the ER but sometimes interesting things will happen. Obviously in the ER different people (young and old) come in for different issues. There have been different cases from an elderly that had a fall and fractured their hip, to random cases where a patient comes in with an infection on their head from some odd cause (this literally happened). However, regardless of whatever happens in the ER, it stays in the ER and my job and duties stay the same. I'm constantly helping to keep the environment sanitary by wiping every inch of surface with heavy-duty sanitary wipes. These sanitation wet wipes are so strong that I'm not even allowed to touch them with my bare hands. I always had to change my gloves whenever I wiped down the surfaces. Everything was pretty much routine in the ER. Wipe down, restocking, running patient samples to the lab for the nurses,etc. 

http://zhailahrosalie.blogspot.com/2012/11/independent-component.html 

http://zhailahrosalie.blogspot.com/2013/01/general-chemistry-quiz-1-011813.html

 

February 13, 2013

To Whom It May Concern:

Re: Zhailah Graza

  This letter is to confirm that Zhailah Graza has volunteered 41.2 community hours

at San Dimas Community Hospital. Zhailah has been assisting in various areas in our facility .   She has demonstrated compassion and great public relation skills toward her community. We appreciate her time and effort she has volunteered to San Dimas community Hospital. If you have any further questions please contact me.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Rivero

Medical Record Supervisor

Volunteer Coordinator

San Dimas Hospital

1350 W. Covina Blvd

San Dimas, CA 91773

909-599-6811  ext 2644

Fax# 909-305-5695

[I apologize for my lack of  'evidence'. By contract I'm not allowed to take pictures or even speak of  who/what goes on in the hospital. HIPPA form.]

✍ Applied 

• Working in the ER helped me narrow down my topic and find out what I wanted to use for my essential question. For example, I wanted to do my project on anesthesiology, but my experience at the ER showed me that anesthesiology is too broad of a topic, so that helped me decide to focus my essential question on a certain specialty of anesthesiology which is now Pain Management. For example, I had a brief conversation with an anesthesiologist and I realized that there are many areas of anesthesiology that I haven't even touched base on yet. So I thought it would be more interesting to focus on one specific area and got an overall grasp on that one division of anesthesiology.

          My chemistry class has helped me understand some of the elements better, which has helped me get to know my topic of anesthesiology a bit better. For example, some anesthetics literally have basic chemical components that are derived from the common elements. Understanding chemistry has aided me in getting to know the very basic components of the anesthetics.