Uncovering Pica During Pregnancy

Joshua Allas (RN), Verrazano Honors Class of 2019, earned a nursing degree at CSI.

Josh presenting his work on pica

The experiences I had while conducting my Verrazano Honors Capstone were enlightening and worthwhile. My Capstone project is titled “The Incidence and Prevalence of Pica During Pregnancy.” Pica is the consumption of non-nutritive substances that is not appropriate for one’s developmental age and is not considered as a culturally sanctioned practice. As a nursing major, the topic of pica really sparked my interest as I was interested to see what would provoke a pregnant mother to participate in such practices and how pica would affect the mother/fetus.

Conducting this project was truly eye-opening. I've learned about the importance of a holistic approach to nursing care as pica may be caused by numerous factors, including underlying physiological disorders, mental status, and cultural implications. Moreover, pica is an understated disorder in healthcare and may be overlooked when gathering patient information. I plan to carry out the knowledge and experiences I’ve obtained during this project and apply it to future practice as a registered nurse, improving the quality of care that I will be providing for all my patients.

The early stages of the Capstone project seemed daunting at first; having to reach certain deadlines, reaching out to possible mentors, and managing the time to work on the project between studying/completing term papers was very overwhelming. However, with the help and support of my fellow Verrazano peers, my mentor, and my Verrazano advisors, the project soon became almost effortless. Regardless of the project's hardships, I have gained invaluable knowledge, experiences, and relationships that I can carry with me throughout future research endeavors and my future career in nursing.

A Capstone at the Intersection of Marketing and Psychology

Leeza Gillies, Class of 2018, completed a double major in Business Marketing and Psychology. 

I changed my mind on what I wanted to do my Capstone project on several times over the my college career. I wanted it to really reflect my education and compile the things I’ve learned into one component. While doing research for my project and collecting ideas I wanted to include I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do that. It’s very difficult to reflect 4 years of education into one presentation. So I decided to focus on one thing I learned that really stuck with me.

I started college as a Psychology major because I wanted to eventually go into therapy. A few semesters in, when it came time to declare a major, I took a different route and ended up a business major with a concentration in Marketing. I kept Psychology as a minor, and with each marketing class I took, I noticed just how much the two topics tied in together. They go hand and hand, so by my senior year I decided to double major. 

Leeza presenting at the Undergraduate Research Conference

Apart from noticing how marketing and psychology tie together, what I’ve learned has also shown me how marketing ties into everyday life. I started to notice just how big of an impact marketing has on our perception of everyday occurrences. The most subtle, unnoticeable things impact our decisions and the way we perceive things, and we may not be aware of them but marketers are. 

Reflecting on the work I produced from my research, I thought I was going to have to condense a lot of information. But after organizing it I realized I had to cut a lot of information out. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no way to reflect 4 years of education in one project. So many concepts are relevant and can significantly contribute to the message I was trying to send, but in the end all I could compile was a summary. A summary on how marketing effects every individual’s life every single day. Hopefully after viewing my project people will be able to detect the subtle exposure they have to marketing strategies every single day.