Goals

Internship Goals

Learning Goal #1: Actively contribute to a professional group 

a) Completing assigned tasks on time (meeting deadlines)

b) Cooperating well with coworkers/creating relationships with others

January Progress: As of right now I believe I have been succeeding and actively progressing in learning goal #1. I have been certainly completing my assigned tasks on time. I have been trying to acquaint myself with my co workers and establishing relationships. I could definitely continue to reach out to coworkers and engage in more friendly dialogue to improve the work environment for myself and others. 

End of Year Progress: At the end of my time at my internship, I believe that I succeeded in accomplishing this goal at my site. I made this goal as a student who never really had work experience or contributed to a company as a professional. I was looking forward to fulfilling my role and being considered a good co-worker. I believe I was able to do this very well. I was always on time with my assigned task due dates. My therapy transcriptions always got done efficiently and on time. I was able to create very comprehensive transcriptions that were used by the researchers to better pull out meaningful patient information. I was also very effective in managing patient records, files, and timelines on MyChart. I was able to ensure that patient records were consistent and the timelines made sense based on their treatment. I made sure this was done efficiently and as quickly as I could for any new patients I was tasked with. I am very proud of some of the relationships I developed with my supervisor and people I worked alongside. When things were asked of me I was trustworthy and able to complete them effectively. 

Learning Goal #2: Having something to show for this internship at the end (for medical school applications and future endeavors

a) End of the year clinical research project

b) Shadowing different providers in the clinic

c) Completing a variety of tasks as assigned

January progress: I am currently in the process of working on my end of year project. I will be conducting a research project as a part of PARC research at Eskenazi hospital. I will have a physical presentation that I can keep and take with me. As for shadowing opportunities, I definitely need to improve in trying to reach out and find opportunities to shadow medical professionals. I will make it a point to do a better job with this. 

End of Year Progress: I believe I partially succeeded in this learning goal as well. As the second half of the year approached, I shifted some of my focus towards creating my end of year research project. I conducted research on comparing the efficacy of treating schizophrenia with antipsychotic medication alone vs combined treatment with psychotherapy. I created a physical powerpoint presentation that I can show to any medical school or future company. I will be presenting this presentation at the LHSI showcase, which is another achievement I can put on my resume. One area I could have saw better success was getting shadowing opportunities at my internship. I was unable to do much shadowing at Eskeanzi due to the doctors business. I would have hoped to have done a lot more. However, there is still time as I have built relationships that I can come back to and request opportunities for shadowing. I hope to do this in the summer.

Learning Goal #3: Gaining knowledge of how patients are treated/cared for in a clinical setting

a) Shadowing providers

b) Schizophrenic patient therapy transcriptions 

c) Reviewing patient success stories from the clinic at end of year

January progress: This is a goal that I believe I have really succeeded in accomplishing. I have learned so much about patient treatment, a doctors daily life, schizophrenia and the similar psychotic disorders, and how patients are cared for in therapy. I have even been able to apply my knowledge in my courses, for example I was able to distinguish between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder on an MCAT question, purely from my experiences at work. 

End of Year Progress: This is a goal that I believe I succeeded in accomplishing pretty early on and continued to build on as the year went on. I learned so much about how doctors interact with patients. I got to see how they respond to all kinds of patient questions as well as what ways they ask questions to extrapolate information. I got a lot of experience listening to the symptoms of schizophrenia and psychosis from the perspective of the patient. I learned so much about the disorders, how they affect a patient's life, and how they can treated effectively. My time here has also taught me a lot of raw information in the field of psychology that appears frequently on the MCAT and other courses in science. Additionally, I gained experience using the program MyChart. This is a program used in medical facilities all over North America to store and manage patient information/records. Familiarity with this program will prove very effective in my future at any medical facility or institution.

Career Goals

My current career goal is to attend medical school and become a doctor who helps treat patients with neurological disorders. I want to first develop a basis in neuroscience in undergrad, then apply to medical school right away. I now have first hand experience around doctors who help patients with brain disorders and it is something that I am very passionate about. I have family members who have had serious brain disorders, and helping improve the lives of these people is something I have a passion for. I am fairly certain in this career choice, which is why I sought out an internship that surrounds this topic. Additionally I am seeking out opportunities that allow me to gain leadership experience, and experience volunteering in my community. 

I believe my internship will play a very important role in helping me achieve my career goals. Firstly, my internship is connected directly to helping patients with a neurological disorder (schizophrenia). The researchers who work at the PARC research center are devoted to treating every patient as best as possible and helping. Working with them has truly inspired me to further pursue a career in helping patients with brain disorders. The passion and dedication they display towards making the lives of their patients better is beyond exemplary. Working with my co-workers has also made me a more driven worker. Being that I plan to attend medical school, this will help me tremendously moving forward. The field of medicine requires an extraordinary amount of hard work and forming these habits now will greatly benefit me in the future. Furthermore, my internship provides me the incredible opportunity to work with and manage patient medical records. Gaining experience with applications such as REDcap and Epic, is incredibly helpful for when I must work with these programs as a future physician. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work at my internship, and believe the experience will be pivotal in my ability to become a successful physician. 

My desired path for the future is beginning to settle in as my time as an undergraduate student goes by. As an aspiring doctor, my set of tasks over the next years are rather clear. I must first continue to take and succeed in the science/neuroscience courses that I am taking as an undergraduate student. Maintaining a high GPA is a difficult but necessary part of this process. Within the next year I must being and complete the process of taking the MCAT. I plan to begin studying prior to or during this upcoming summer. With this amount of time to study, I should be able to take the exam, and hopefully do well, come next january. A little bit beyond this will be applying to medical school. This is a competitive and tedious process that is not easy. I must put together a good resume, GPA, and MCAT score. My community and volunteer involvement must be clear and high. MY dedication to science and medicine must be clear to the office of admissions at the medical schools. This is the timeline of tasks that I am currently focused on. 

This upcoming summer is going to be a very important time for me in my effort to reach my goals. I plan on using a lot of the summer time to begin studying for the MCAT exam. I plan on diving into the content of the different sections and starting to develop an understanding of it. I have acquired the necessary books for learning the content that is present on the MCAT. The rest of my time at IUPUI is going to be spent trying to maintain high grades and GPA, as well as getting my things in order for eventually applying to medical school. I plan on continuing to take work/volunteer opportunities to build up my resume. My internship has really solidified my goals for the rest of my time at IUPUI. It has given me the opportunity to get closer to a doctor-patient experience. I have really enjoyed my time working in a clinical setting and have further solidified my goals of trying to go to medical school and become a doctor myself. In the past, I have not been confident in making decisions about my future and my career.  However as of late, I am very confident in the choices I make about who I want to become. I have a plan and I really want to follow and go through with it. I want to prepare myself for the MCAT this upcoming summer, take the exam, and then apply to a good medical school.