First week at AFHSC

Last week was my first of six weeks at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC--don't try to say it as a word; it's not one of those kinds of acronyms. Just the letters). I wish I could say I accomplished a lot, but that wouldn't be entirely true. I do have a project, so that's a start (and honestly, all anyone ever accomplishes in the first week).

My original idea for a project came from my surgeon friends, who have said that they've noticed different rates of mucor infections in war wounded between Walter Reed and Bethesda, suggesting that maybe there's a difference in either the conditions the Army and Marine Corps are fighting in, or there's a difference in care. (Mucor, by the way, is an invasive fungal infection that's pretty rare and very bad). Well, difference in rates between the two hospitals or not, there haven't been enough cases in the last ten years to do any sort of analysis. So that idea was scrapped.

I didn't really have any back-up plans, so my project mentors suggested that I read through the Medical Surveillance Monthly Report (http://www.afhsc.mil/msmr?clear), which is the military's version of CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Well, I didn't see too much exciting, but I did notice that they always clumped injuries and poisonings together, and while injuries have been a big priority, nobody's ever done an analysis of poisonings. So that's what I'm doing. I'm going to do an analysis of who has the highest rates of being hospitalized for poisonings (of both medical and non-medical types), looking at age, sex, race, branch of military service, rank, education level, and marital status (and maybe more categories; I don't remember).

We also found an article from the civilian medical literature that described how you can estimate which injuries and poisonings are intentional (ie, suicide attempt), using the type of injury/poisoning (all poisonings fit this category) and certain psych diagnoses within 180 days of being hospitalized. So we're going to be looking at psych diagnoses before poisonings, to estimate which ones were intentional and which were not.

At least, that's the plan. My request for data just went in today, so we'll see if I get any usable data from any of that.

As if I didn't have enough to do with that project, my project proposal that I presented for my degree is just getting started (yes, I was supposed to have this done before finishing my degree...). At this point, we're still at the stage where we contact people and beg them to participate in the study. There are over 200 people on the list, and we've gotten (wait for it...) one set of surveys back. Yes, one. So part of my job is to find a way to reach the ones we haven't to also beg them to join. It's all sorts of fun. At least it's not very intellectually challenging. Just time consuming. It's great fun.