My Internship

Project Abstract

Depression occurs more commonly in adolescents with diabetes, and during the COVID-19 pandemic even more adolescents struggled with depressive symptoms.  The objective of my project is to evaluate the difference in depressive symptoms in adolescents with type type 2 diabetes mellitus. The outcomes measures include depressive symptoms, as measured with the standardized Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) that is completed during diabetes clinic visits. Results of the PHQ-9 will be measured as a numerical value. Descriptive statistics (age, race, sex) will be performed for youth aged 14-17 years with type 2 diabetes. Comparisons for depression scores, body mass index (BMI), and hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c) will be performed using T-tests. The results of my research project would be substantial as the results may encourage a emphasis on the mental health of diabetic children. 

Learning and Skills

At the end of this internship, I hope to have improved my communication skills as well as my time management skills. I believe my punctual mannerism will aid me in performing to the best of my ability in this internship in a timely manner. I hope to also become more confident in my ability to accomplish tasks and in the knowledge I have on diabetes and qualitative research. I also hope this internship opportunity would allow me to become confident in my choice of profession and eliminate any doubt I have in regards to my career goals. I also hope to establish a better understanding of the interaction between a health care provider and the patient through shadowing Dr. Hannon during her clinical hours.

I am most excited about taking part in various projects and learning how to use different platforms to integrate into the diabetes related studies. I enjoy using medical records and learning a patient's history and following their health journey through the documentations as it is vastly different than textbook definitions of all of the diseases and health problems. I am  also looking forward to shadowing Dr. Hannon in her clinical setting to get a foot in the door of what it is really like being a medical health care provider. Adding on, I am excited to grow my professional skills as I take part in many teams for diverse projects and communicate with other contributors.

Coming close to the end of the fall semester, I have seen my skillset being applied into the projects I participate in. I've learned to communicate with team members and  complete my tasks daily. I've also learned better time management skills as I balance my internship responsibilities with my academic, social, personal and extracurricular life. 

As I take pre-requisite classes for PA school, I have found myself in many biology and chemistry based courses. In the content of these science classes, I have learned the anatomy and physiology of the human body along with some human genetics. Coming into the internship with the background knowledge that I have gained from these classes, I was able understand medical records better. Due to this advantage, I have made connections of the consistent patterns between those who have diabetes such as the increased chance of the disease with genetic predisposition.  The coursework makes more sense to me know as the work from my internship site has pushed me to make analyze real life scenarios of what I have learned in the classroom.

The Workplace

I have seen my team members complete a vast amount of tasks and work in a short time frame. Observing this, I realized that the passion and motivation is a trait of my teammates that I admire. Viewing the responsibilities of the projects as a purpose instead of just work, greatly impacts the effort I put into it. 

My day to day supervisor as well as my main supervisor, Dr. Hannon, both have very busy schedules. I greatly admire their work ethic and how efficiently they work. This internship has allowed me to hold a sense of independence as I am responsible for completing my own tasks and contribute to the team projects. 

In the beginning of the internship, I thought I would be supervised more, in the sense of a teacher. However, there is a much bigger factor of independence which I did not expect. I am grateful for this, though, as I am encouraged to manage my own time better and be responsible to fulfill my roles. 

Working with people with different attitudes with me was a beneficial experience for me. In the early stages of my internship, I tended to be very stressed out with the workload and the exposure to new EHR systems that I was not familiar with. However, the attitude of my supervisor, Brett McKinney, allowed me to realize I should not stress so much and accept that I will learn the skills eventually. His optimistic and positivity outlook on my stress pushed me to be more like him and enjoy the learning process and not be so hard on myself. The professional result of the interactions between my supervisor and I allowed the opportunity to grow not only in the aspect of skills, but also in the positivity of a healthy mindset as well.

Successes and Challenges

As I began my first project, which consisted of reviewing and extracting data from medical records, I was quite confused. I was already rethinking my decision and too shy to ask the countless questions when I was learning the process of finding the data I needed.  I believe it had taken an 45minutes to an hour completing that data extraction for one patient due to my overthinking and lack of experience with the database. Now, the same process I can complete in about 10 minutes or less. I am really proud of myself for overcoming the doubt I had about myself and learning in a short time frame. 

Adding on to my proud moments, I began my internship not expecting such a big independence factor in my work. However, this forced me to adapt to unexpected changes as well as be able to stand on my own two feet. Although my supervisors were always welcoming to help out when I needed it, I was able to fulfill my responsiblities without step by step instructions. My work at my internship site has definitely enhanced my confidence.

The most challenging part of my experience has been time management. As a full time college student, it has become quite stressful at times for me to fulfill my roles in all aspects in my life. I try my best to not get burnt out so when I know a difficult exam is approaching, I try to take a day or two off from my internship to prioritize my grades.