PhD Student Ifeanyi Madujbeya Shares His Story

PhD student Ifeanyi Madujbeya, BSN, RN, was recently featured Education and Career News for their campaign focused on empowering our nurses.

Why did you choose to pursue your Ph.D.?

My desire to pursue a Ph.D. in nursing emanated from a research project I worked on for improving health outcomes in patients with heart failure. 

During my undergraduate nursing school clinical rotation in a cardiovascular progressive and telemetry unit, I observed the onerous challenge patients with heart failure experience with adhering to their medication and diet regimens. Most of these patients take multiple medications and are on restricted diets (cardiac diets). The burden of chronic diseases, comorbidities, and low illiteracy made it difficult for them and their caregivers to understand and adhere to their recommended regimen. 

Moreover, the regimen instructions usually comprise huge print-outs that patients and their families barely had time to read. Thus, as a result of poor adherence to the recommended regimen, patients with heart failure experienced high rates of acute exacerbation and re-admissions. 

In order to address the challenges of poor adherence, and improving self-care among patients with heart failure, I collaborated with four other students in my undergraduate program to develop a mobile application called “MyIntake Scanner.” The app uses the user’s health data to scan foods products’ labels and medication barcode to check for restricted ingredients, food-to-drug interaction, and drug-to-drug interaction. Users can also track certain health parameters like calories, cholesterol, and sodium intakes. 

The MyIntake Scanner project exposed me to the enormous potential of health technologies, especially mobile health devices, in improving self-care in patients with heart failure. As a result, I chose to pursue a Ph.D. in nursing to gain more knowledge of the patient population and to develop the research skills required for incorporating health information technologies to promote the self-care potentials in patients with heart failure. 

What do you love most about your program? 

I consider it a great privilege to be in one of the top-ranked nursing Ph.D. programs in the country, and to have the opportunity to be mentored by some of the most renowned nursing researchers. 

The faculty members at the University of Kentucky’s nursing Ph.D. program provide invaluable mentorship to the Ph.D. students. For example, my faculty mentor played an integral role in shaping and developing my research ideas. She helped me strive for new heights in my research focus and to maximize my potential. I have also worked in my mentor’s research projects, which has helped me acquire new research skills. 

Thus, one thing I like most about the program is the willingness and availability of the faculty members to mentor and guide Ph.D. students. The faculty members are always ready to go an extra mile to ensure students have access to the tools that are necessary not only for the successful completion of the program, but for the development of excellent research skills. 

What is your Ph.D. research focused on?

My research focuses on the use of mobile applications (mHealth) to improve self-care in patients with heart failure. mHealth has been shown to be a readily available and cost-effective approach that may improve self-care, and decrease hospitalization and mortality rates in patients with heart failure. 

However, the uptake of mHealth among patients with heart failure remains low. The aim of my research is to generate new knowledge about the factors that influence the adoption and utilization of mHealth for self-care among patients with heart failure. Also, I hope to develop interventions to promote the use of mhealth among the patient population. 

What impact are you hoping to make with your research? 

About 25 percent of the heart failure patients are rehospitalized within 30 days of discharge from an acute care hospital, and 50 percent of patients are rehospitalized within 60 months of discharge. Current evidence attributes the high rate of rehospitalization to poor self-care engagement in the patient population. 

My research goal is to generate knowledge that may facilitate the adoption and utilization of mHealth in the patient’s population with the endpoints of improving self-care and decreasing hospitalization and mortality rates for heart failure patients.