Anne Johnson, a Portland State University doctoral candidate in sociology, will compete in the Council of Graduate Schools' national Three-Minute Thesis competition in St. Louis this year after winning regionals in March.
The Three-Minute Thesis contest, or 3MT for short, is a research communication competition designed to help graduate students develop presentation skills by consolidating their research and presenting it succinctly to a non-specialist audience, all in just three minutes.
Johnson was awarded first place in the PSU 3MT competition last November and took home a cash prize of $1,000. She went on to take first prize in the regional competition, too, held virtually as part of the Western Association of Graduate Schools' annual meeting on March 22. Her doctoral dissertation draws on both medical sociology and criminology, examining phlebotomy, blood draws, in two contexts: medicine and law enforcement.
This December, Johnson will compete in the national round of 3MT, held at the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) 2024 Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.
The 2024 PSU Three Minute Thesis competition will be held on campus November 14, 2024. The Graduate School will accept applications starting Friday, October 4, through midnight on Sunday, October 20. Learn more and sign up for the competition here.
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NOT JUST A POKE: EXPLORING THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF DRAWING BLOOD
Most of us are familiar with having blood drawn at the doctor’s office, but police officers are increasingly using blood draws as a form of chemical testing for suspected impaired drivers. Johnson's work explores phlebotomy in both medical and law enforcement contexts.
"I think too often in medical spaces, and in general, we do not give enough weight to how emotionally significant blood draws can be for people," Johnson said. "Phlebotomy is the most common invasive medical procedure. But in talking to people about their experiences getting blood drawn, it is more significant than we often realize. People hold on to the trauma of bad blood draws and remember them. So there's room culturally right now for us to think about it."
For her three-paper dissertation, Johnson interviewed patients who had had their blood drawn in purely medical contexts, as well as law enforcement officers who draw blood from drivers. In the medical context, many participants who have had negative experiences with blood draws reported avoiding medical care so as to not undergo more blood draws. What’s more, many of her participants reported feeling dehumanized by their phlebotomists’ focus on efficiency instead of care. In the policing context, efficiency is the chief motivator for law enforcement phlebotomy: when officers can draw blood themselves, they save time and money, as well as avoid clashes with medical providers over non-consensual blood draws. The tension between efficiency and care is a throughline of her dissertation.
Johnson hopes that her findings will be valuable to medical professionals in search of ways to improve patient experiences, sociologists interested in power dynamics, and members of the law enforcement and legal community as police-conducted blood draws continue to spread across the United States.
"The culminating idea of my 3MT speech is that most people don't know law enforcement phlebotomy is happening. If a community decides, 'Our DUI situation is severe enough that yes, we want our police officers to be drawing blood,' then that decision may be the right choice for that community. But most of the officers I interviewed said that their community members have no idea that police can draw blood until they’re pulled over. I would like it to be more of a public conversation," Johnson said.
WHY DO 3MT?
The 3MT concept was developed by the University of Queensland in 2008 and is now held at over 900 universities worldwide. The idea is to challenge graduate students to be as succinct and engaging as possible when communicating complex research topics, which helps develop their presentation and research communication skills.
"When I had to distill my dissertation topic into three minutes, it really helped me tighten up the language. It prepared me with an elevator pitch that I can now give to potential employers or share with other academics at conferences. Having to focus in on the message I want to communicate was really helpful," Johnson said.