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Since grade school, Jenny Burns has been interested in psychology. She remembers learning in sixth grade about the Stanford Prison Experiment, a psychological simulation involving college students who role-played being guards and prisoners. The two-week experiment was ended after only six days when the “guards” exhibited sadistic behavior and the “prisoners” showed signs of extreme stress and depression. “I didn’t want to be like that but I was fascinated by how they were able to manipulate behavior through the environment,” she remembers.
As a teenager, Burns was a top student at highly competitive New Trier High School on Chicago’s North Shore. Her favorite movies included “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” a comedy/drama set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, and “A Beautiful Mind,” which told the story of Nobel-prize winning economist and mathematician John Nash. Nash developed paranoid schizophrenia as an adult and spent time in mental institutions before finding a way to live with his condition. It was no surprise to her family when Burns decided to major in psychology at McGill University in Montreal and became a researcher in a university psychology lab that focused on vulnerabilities to anxiety and depression. After graduating she returned home where she worked as an emergency medical technician racking up the patient contact hours she would need to be a physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner.
I was fascinated by how they were able to manipulate behavior through the environment
Jenny Burns
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But Burns, 25, missed doing research and felt frustrated not knowing what happened to patients after she dropped them off at hospital emergency rooms. The Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab seemed like a good place to combine her interests in risk assessment, patient care and healthcare outcomes; Burns started there as a research assistant in early 2019. “The EMT job gave me experience in patient care. CROR gave me a chance to look at what happens after diagnosis,” she says.
As a CROR research assistant, she began working on the Midwest Regional Spinal Cord Injury Care System project, a long-term study of people with spinal cord injuries that starts when they are treated at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. It was Burns’ job to recruit new patients and get their agreement to be in the study, which meant visiting them in their hospital rooms at a delicate time. She also was conducting follow-up interviews by phone with people who were injured years or decades ago. “I can honestly tell new SCI patients that a lot of people do really well. The fact that they’re alive all those years later and leading active, happy lives is encouraging,” Burns says. “Knowing that really helps me when I first meet the people I’m recruiting.”
Jenny has developed into an amazing project coordinator and has really seized the opportunity to shine.
Linda Ehrlich-Jones, RN, PhD
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Now a project coordinator, Burns is working on a variety of projects related to the Spinal Cord Injury Model System and gearing up for a role in a new CROR grant focused on expanding the Rehabilitation Measures Database (RMD) to enhance patient understanding of standardized assessments. “Jenny has developed into an amazing project coordinator and has really seized the opportunity to shine,” says her supervisor Linda Ehrlich-Jones, RN, PhD. “We really appreciate all the hard work she has done and will be doing to get our new team up to speed.”
When she’s not at work, Burns enjoys her life in Chicago’s lively Lincoln Park neighborhood, catching up on true crime podcasts and documentaries and spending time with furry friends. “I really like dogs and animals in general,” she says. “I have some friends and family members who recently adopted dogs so I’ve been trying to get my hands on them as much as possible.”
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