Goals
Professional Goals
Internship goals:
One of my biggest goals is to improve my communication, time management, and organizational skills. This is important to me because all of these skills play important roles in my future goal of becoming a physician. I need to be good at time management and organization to continue doing well in undergraduate and make it into medical school, and communication is an essential skill as a physician because you will be working on a team with other healthcare providers and everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to the care that is being provided. Some things I have done to improve theses skills is making sure I communicate with my supervisor about anything such as deadlines or questions. I also have to communicate with new residents a few times every month to talk about ideas for the new podcast episodes, and set a recording date and deadline for the script so I can review them. I also have to make sure to keep my schedules organized since I have both school and work, and need to figure out dates and times when the residents are free to meet for recordings.
Another one of my goals is to quickly learn the podcast process, be efficient in my work and ultimately actually be helpful to this team. I found through this process that I am a pretty quick learner, because I got adjusted to the whole process super quickly, such as when it came to learning the editing program and learning how to record the podcast virtually. I am definitely better at completing my tasks in a more timely manner than when I first started, but I know with more time and practice I will be able to be even more efficient with my time when it comes to completing all the work for my internship.
One more goal I have for this internship is to increase my knowledge of pediatric health issues. So far, I have been able to learn a lot about pediatric health both through this podcast and through events that I am allowed to attend as an intern with this team. When I work on the podcast, I get to learn a lot through the whole process by reading the scripts and listening to the information during recording and editing. I have learned a lot about different things, even simple information that I did not know about the flu by working with these residents. I have also been allowed to attend events such as grand rounds, one in which my supervisor Dr. Reinoso presented over food insecurities and access and how it impacts health outcomes.
A new goal I have developed is to be able to start this project in Spanish as well. Dr. Reinoso and my other supervisor, Holly, have connected me with some Spanish-speaking physicians who have also been wanting to create this podcast in Spanish to be able to reach an even larger population that may need the information the doctors provide in this show. I hope that by the end of my internship, we are able to start this and figure out how we can organize our website to continue uploading in both languages.
Career Goals
My current career goals are to attend medical school after undergrad and ultimately become a physician. Part of my drive for pursuing this career is because I am passionate about providing care for underserved communities. I want to be able to serve populations such as immigrants. I am fluent in Spanish, as well as Hispanic, and I grew up with that culture. My parents are both immigrants and I had to see the challenges and disparities they faced when it came to receiving medical care, and I want to be able to erase those barriers as a physician in the future. I think it is important for people of all ethnicities, cultures, etc to go into the medical field because we can all provide different views and try to help get rid of some of the barriers people may face.
Some parts of my internship allow me to see the work that physicians do to reach out to those who may face barriers to accessing medicine. I love that my internship gives me a glimpse into this side of medicine. Each month, I get to meet new residents on the community pediatrics rotation, and I get to see some of the service work that they do during their rotation. For the ones I work most directly with, this includes researching pediatric health issues and creating a script for the podcast. For others on this rotation, they get to do activities such as interviewing immigrant families about their experiences with healthcare. It's amazing to see residency programs incorporating this type of education to help doctors understand how to provide care or resources to these populations.
Goals and Next Steps
At this point, I am very sure that I want to go into medicine and become a physician, and my internship has helped enforce that. I have truly loved working with the residents and seeing what their community pediatrics rotation is like. I also love that I am able to learn from new residents every month when we record episodes.
To reach my goals, I need to ensure that I do well in my pre-requisite classes to try and avoid future obstacles such as having to do a post-bacc to enhance my GPA, although I am open to those options if I have to do them to become a stronger applicant. I also need to try to gain some clinical experience not only for when I apply to medical schools, but also to really confirm that I want to pursue this career and I enjoy patient care and the hospital setting (though from previous shadowing experiences, I have enjoyed it.) One way I will be doing this is by taking an EMT course this summer. If all goes well, I will become certified and work as an EMT throughout the rest of my undergraduate years.
