My internship site is at Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Hospital, where I am an intern for the IU Psychotic Disorders Program (IUPDP). Specifically, I work in the Prevention and Recovery Center for Early Psychosis (PARC) in the lower level of the hospital. IU professors and researchers work to identify causes of psychotic illnesses and develop better treatments for patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a psychotic illness characterized by a wide range of symptoms including hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and cognitive dysfunction. Schizophrenia affects a patient's independent living, social functioning, and vocational functioning. This makes schizophrenic research imperative, as it can lead to better understanding of the causes of the disorder as well as lead to development of better treatment strategies. It is an honor to be a part of this program and work alongside psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, and professional researchers who all have a common goal of striving to help improve the lives of affected patients. My role mainly consists of listening back on the patient therapy sessions and creating digital documents that transcribe the sessions and provide physical data for the doctor to look back on. Additionally, I manage patient records using Epic patient portal and REDcap to establish a timeline of patient symptoms and interventions. I also go through and correct any errors or conflicting factors in patient documents. 

End of Year Project:

Learning and Skills

There are a plethora of skills that I have had to use and develop in my time at my internship. These are skills that will benefit me as a member of my workplace and beyond. As a pre-med student development of these skills is imperative to my success in the field of medicine.

Some of the skills I believe I am already using very well and am fairly confident in. One of these skills is communication. I believe that in my time at my internship site I have been able to communicate very efficiently. This is a skill I have been building from my previous academic and volunteer experiences. I have been able to communicate my work and understanding as well as when I am confused or do not understand a certain task. This goes hand and hand with teamwork. Although a lot of my work is independent, my colleagues make it very easy to work alongside them and ask them for help and advice along the way. I believe my strongest application of any skill has been independence. A lot of my work requires independently working on my tasks. I have been able to do so efficiently thus far and hope to continue working well independently.

One skill that I believe I would like to continue to work on is my integration and application of my knowledge. Since joining this internship site I have been given the chance to see doctors, nurses, and professional researchers work with real patients.  As a pre-med student this has been extremely valuable. I haven't got the chance to apply any of the nuances I have learned as a part of this internship. I want to be able to use data to come to conclusions on patients without direct instruction from the other members of the study. Another skill I would like to continue to work on is time management. Although I believe I am a responsible and punctual employee, my schedule as a college student is very compact. I often struggle to find good opportunities to come into work for long periods of time. I plan to improve on this by ensuring that I schedule my upcoming semester around time slots where I can prioritize my internship. I want to take a large course load but also be able to focus on my work at Eskenazi more easily for 10 hours every single week.

My internship fits very well into what I am learning in my courses, specifically my Systems of Neuroscience course. In this course we often discuss different disorders of the brain including schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Greater knowledge of the different causes, symptoms, and treatment of these disorders makes things a lot easier when I am at my internship. I really enjoy how it constantly feels like I'm building knowledge and then instantly applying it or learning it at a deeper level when I go into work. Conversely, the real life experience I get from my internship really helps give me the big picture of these disorders for my study in class. Building off of things I already know is a lot easier than learning something completely new. Additionally, my internship helps show me why understanding the content we go over in class is very important. This gives me greater motivation to gain a truly deep understanding when I am in class or studying the textbook. 

My internship fits very well into my MCAT study. I am going to begin studying hard for the MCAT this summer, and a lot of the things that I have learned at Eskenazi will benefit me. A lot of the psychology section of the MCAT includes topics such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, positive/negative symptoms, different forms of psychotherapy, etc. These are all topics that are the main focus of the PARC research center. I have been able to more easily pickup the psychology content since joining my internship and being very hands on with these terms and disorders. I hope to be able to tie the information I get at work with my MCAT study as much as possible going forward. I hope that every time I get a question that relates to schizophrenia, I will immediately think back to my time at work and remember something useful with a smile on my face. 

I have learned a lot as a part of Eskenazi hospital and my internship. First and foremost I have learned a lot about a professional working environment. This has been my first real job/internship and working around long time professionals has been a great learning experience. I have also learned a lot about the medical field. Getting firsthand experience around medical doctors and nurse practitioners is very fascinating. I get a look into the day to day life of these doctors and researchers, and it has taught me a lot about discipline, the importance of having a passion for helping others in the field of medicine, and the benefits of good organization. 

My favorite experience thus far as a part of my internship is getting access to patient records and being tasked with creating a timeline of symptoms and interventions leading to the patients entrance into the study. Often times within all the patient records, there are conflicting dates concerning the onset of various symptoms and treatment plans. I must correct these errors and determine an accurate date for the onset of the patients schizophrenic symptoms and what days they were hospitalized/provided treatment. I have learned a lot about how doctors record information and how to utilize the different commonly used applications that hold patient information.

The impact of the research and treatment done at my internship site is beyond any one person. It is about treating patients who are struggling with schizophrenia, a debilitating psychological disorder that uproots someone's entire life. Schizophrenia is a complex, multifactorial disorder with a myriad of symptoms. The best treatment options for this disorder are not very clear cut and effective for every individual. Research on treatment of schizophrenia is absolutely necessary and could help benefit millions of people around the world. Any new information that is revealed or any novel treatments that are released can make a huge difference in all of these patients' lives. The PARC research center at Eskenazi has a full team of researchers working to make breakthroughs. My contribution to the team may seem small but is vital. I am tasked with creating comprehensive transcription documents based on therapy sessions conducted with the patients. This makes the meaningful information stick out and be more accessible to the researchers. I am also tasked with using MyChart through EPIC to manage and review patient records/files. I review the patient's timeline of symptoms and treatment in order to ensure there are no inconsistencies or mis-inputs made by the doctors, nurses, or researchers about the patient. This is very important to make sure every little record made about the patient is correctly put into their file. 

The Workplace

The professionals who work at the PARC research center exhibit qualities that are very exemplary. There are many behaviors and actions that I would like to have as a professional. The first quality I would love to have in the future, is their teamwork skills. The research study is very much done as a team in a large group. I have been able to sit in on meetings where they discuss the progression and regression of schizophrenic patients. They are incredibly good at communicating as a team and coming to quick conclusions that factor in everybody's input and ideas. Next, I would love to in my future profession show their same passion. It is very clear at my internship site, that the researchers are passionate about helping improve the lives of the patients. They are far more concerned with helping improve the lives of the patients, then they are with acquiring data and statements. This passion for helping others is something I believe I have, and would love to show when I hopefully become a professional in the field.

In my time working with these lovely people I have found that there are all kinds of different people working together. There are people from all kinds of different cultures, backgrounds, and communities. Despite their differences they make for a great team that communicates very well with each other. One thing that was very interesting was to notice the differences in majors and educational levels. There are medical doctors, nurses, resident medical students, graduates from secondary science programs, and students with bachelor's degrees in psychology. This opened my eyes to all the different paths that can get you to a workplace that you are passionate about. 

I selected this internship because it lined up with my long term career goals and surrounded a research topic I was passionate about. It has been a lot of what I suspected but there are certain aspects that surprised me. One thing that I didn't expect was the amount of people that work together to help the medical doctor with the research study. I thought that a study that was very specifically focused on one disorder would have a smaller amount of people, however there is a large amount of people who work together to both acquire information on the study, and help treat the patients. 

In my time at my internship I have learned a great deal from my co workers who work around me. I have learned a lot about the experience of helping treat patients. I have learned a lot about the time and care that is necessary to effectively treat patients. It has inspired me to become someone who treats patients myself. I really enjoy the experience of working everyday to help other people feel better. I feel that I have grown a lot as a professional as well. I have got to visualize my coworkers work together and taken things from them that I find make them successful. I have learned a lot about appropriate communication in a workplace as well the importance of being determined and punctual. I would like to continue to watch how the long time professionals work and interact in order to continue learning nuances of what make them successful. I also want to get an opportunity to shadow a doctor, and see how they interact with patients in a live room. This would be both an interesting and educational experience for me. 

The workplace culture at my internship is what impressed me the most in my time there. The team that is assembled are some of the most caring and respectful people I have ever met. They are very friendly and incredibly passionate about the patients that they help treat and manage. The culture is entirely built around patient service. The top priority is always getting things done to make it easier on the patients. The workers are also just very kind to those around them. They were very welcoming to me as I entered the internship and maintained this kindness all throughout. They also made an effort to make me feel included at times. I can confidently say that this is the ideal workplace situation and I could not think of how to change it from my limited experience in professional work. 

Successes and Challenges

An example of a time I've felt successful in my internship is when I was able to complete a large number of therapy transcriptions in a rather short period of time. I was getting them done really fast and efficiently, and it felt great to be a very productive help for the study. Another small success I felt at my internship was becoming a part of the workplace more. I began to get into conversations with coworkers more often, and became a lot less isolated as when I first joined. I think what has made me most successful thus far is just staying motivated to help and learning as much as possible from those around me. First experiencing these successes is going to help me with future successes moving forward. For example getting better acclimated in the workplace is going to help me be more comfortable in the office and ask better questions. It will allow me to be more confident in my work as well as be a better teammate for others. One area that I have newly found success in is multitasking at my workplace. I have been simultaneously working on my individual research project and my work that I am given for Eskenazi. I have been able to reach deadlines for both my project and my work. I am very proud of this success and hope to keep it up. 

The most challenging part of my experience thus far has been balancing my large course load. I have a very packed schedule this semester that gives me very little time to go into work. It has been very challenging to find time in my extremely variable schedule to clock 10 hours every single week. To deal with this I have ensured to maintain good communication with my supervisor. I will ensure that she knows when I have availability so that I can come in and get as much work done as possible. I believe that dealing with this challenge early on is actually something that will benefit me long-term in the workplace. I now understand the importance of creating a schedule that allows me to balance my school time and my internship time. Dealing with this challenge has changed how I schedule my courses next semester and how I plan my responsibilities moving forward. With this change in mindset, I plan to have more time to spend focused entirely on my internship responsibilities. A challenge that I continue to face managing conflicting priorities. Schoolwork, volunteer work, mentor work, and internship work become difficult to balance as priorities. With competing demands for my time and attention it can be difficult to decide what to spend my time on and what to put off for later. Expectations are rather high in most of these obligations and can make it somewhat overwhelming. However, one thing I am practicing is breaking down my tasks into smaller pieces and deciding which tasks are most urgent. I take care of what tasks are most important to complete earliest and it has helped a lot. When the tasks are very large its harder to split them up and it becomes much more difficult to manage.