I have had some amazing professional experiences!

An Overview of My Past Experiences

I did my internship at Riley Pediatric Care Center, which was a community pediatric project podcast. I worked with Drs. Deanna R. Reinoso, and Jill Helphinstine, and Holly P. Ann. My site was researching the importance of social factors of health as well as finding available resources to assist families in the communities. We recorded monthly episodes about various health topics for parents and youths. These episodes are recorded by residents and are based on various health concerns and issues that parents often experience with their children and youths. The topics are very educative and can educate parents about certain illnesses that their children go through and what medical decisions they should take to keep their children safe and healthy. Many people across the country listen to our podcast as well as download the episodes from our website, including foreign countries. Our podcast can be found at kidshealthcast.org. The work that my site is doing is very important because social determinants of health play a major role in improving health. Additionally, connecting families and communities with health resources is an important step in addressing health disparities as well as promoting preventive care. 

As an intern, I was responsible for managing the podcast with the residents, making monthly reports of the percentage of people who have listened to the latest episode that was released as well as various countries that are shown in the graph on the website. I also have the opportunity to participate in various activities about healthcare skills such as child safety and healthcare disparities workshops, food insecurity sessions, and care mapping sessions as well as spending time with healthcare professionals. 

I have uploaded pictures below of our team including myself during the recording sessions of the episodes for the podcast and other activities that we did together as well. 

Learning and Skills 

Personally, I love interacting with people who are going through challenges and listen carefully to their concerns in order to see how I can possibly help. Also, with my passion for helping others with their health care needs, this internship fits into my career goals. In this project, they provide health care resources that are available to families in different communities. They do research on health disparities in certain communities in order to better assist them. Therefore, I believe that this internship has the necessary components to help me prepare for my career as well as giving me an idea of what my career will look like. 

After, I have started the internship in my site, I have realized that I am mostly using the skills of teamwork communication and I am more confident in teamwork collaboration. The skills that I would like to continue working on is independence. It is a little bit challenging for me to independently create plans and meet goals to achieve intended results although I am very good at completing assigned tasks. With regards to actions, I need to take to help me grow as a professional is a mentoring session which would provide me with professional tools. These tools would help me to get more self-confidence and tips of how to engage with my supervisors.  

I think this internship fits in well with what I am learning in class. As a Health Science major, my classes are mostly focus on nutrition for healthy body, advocacy for better health care system, the elderly communities vs. society, the struggles and rights of individuals with disabilities, the minority communities vs. access to health care, and the function of the health care system as a whole. This internship provides many resources that line up with these contents such as workshops on understanding health insurance, health care disparities, food insecurity, care mapping sessions (which are really focus on physical and cognitive disabilities), and community health worker trainings. 

This internship has in fact helped me to gain deeper understanding of many contents of my classes. It brought me more awareness of the reason it is important to advocate for the health care needs of those in society that are considered minority groups, and the better ways health care professionals can advocate for them. One more interesting thing that I have learned through this site is that being a community health care worker is all about advocacy. There are significant changes that can happen when having necessary tools to advocate for that matter.  

Since when I have started this internship, I have learned many things that make me proud of this experience. The most significant thing I have learned so far is how to communicate professionally. I have gained skills in managing various types of communication between a team at different levels. I have also been able to handle all things podcasts that my site records monthly. Another thing that I am really proud of is the way I am growing professionally regardless of my flaws. The fact that I am a part of an extraordinary and supportive team I have the opportunity to learn and grow comfortably. 

As of right now, I feel more confident to address some situations and lead on activities for my team, which I am very proud of. I believe that my contributions impact the larger project or goals at my site because I brought new ideas and subjects with regard to the goal of my site project. I have demonstrated good leadership skills and take on responsibilities to manage the podcast and organize community events. Because my site is focused on health literacy/education and I am passionate about combatting health disparities in the communities, it has been like a perfect match or more like an amazing journey for both myself and the progress of my site project. 

The Work Place 

Among other opportunities that I am looking forward to as part of professional development includes being a professional podcaster (I am very excited about this part). 

•  I want to be able to work independently as well as a reliable co-worker. 

•  Bring new and relevant ideas to the assignments in order to contribute actively as a team member. Having good, instructive, and professional conversations with my supervisors.

•  Do my own research in regards to the tasks that we are doing for additional information. 

• As of today, the workplace has been a warming and welcoming environment for me and my supervisors are very comprehensive. I like how they make me feel that I am a part of the team. They give me opportunities to make decisions and they share responsibilities. In addition, they always offer more professional opportunity that is useful for my career. With regards to behaviors, and actions I have seen that I want to have as a professional are to gain both more independence and problem-solving skills.

• My internship experience has been very different than what I expected it to be. When I started, I thought I would be doing more tasks for the site such as spending a lot of time in healthcare facilities and professionals including a lot harder work. However, I am doing much more communication stuff, which is a great opportunity for me to gain professional communication skills. Also, I am doing more tasks that are benefiting me and are much related to my classwork. These works play an important role in what I want my future career to be. Although my duties are assigned by my supervisors,  of course, I have many opportunities that are helping me to grow both personally and professionally, which I am proud of. 

• The workplace culture of my internship is diverse and beautiful. Although it was challenging for me in the beginning and probably for my team too because of our cultural differences. There was never anything toxic whatsoever, I just did not feel completely fit in because I felt different, and I was not sure how to address my concerns. Once I have opened up and we talked about it, I have realized that they always embraced my differences and showed respect for my culture. Of course, I feel the same way about their culture too. My supervisors even created space within our project program for me to educate residents about my culture. The presentation sessions are always well received by the residents which are often turned into a great conversation. 

• One of the things that this experience has taught me is the importance of education and how cultural differences awareness can impact the relationship that we develop with our peers or colleagues in the workplace. Another interesting skill that my site has allowed me to discover about myself is how speaking a second language can be an opportunity for me as well while pursuing my career. Overall, my team has made the workplace an amazing welcoming place for all of us because we develop great understanding and support for each other. It's always exciting when I need to meet with them and work together. 

Successes and Challenges 

As an intern, what I have most successful at is getting the confident to talk in public or in front of a group of people. This progress is a result of the dynamic of my site because I have the opportunity to handle certain activities, reaching out to people and plan for things. For instance, one of my supervisors asked me to reached out to a community leader for a partnership, and I was able to do it successfully. Because of this connection we have come up with a plan. My supervisors, myself, along with the residents, we plan on doing workshops, and the contents will be based on health preventive measures, food insecurity, children’s safety, immunization, applying for health insurance and help families to understand eligibility criteria, and the importance of Covid-19 vaccine. 

I think the most challenging part of my experience was professional communication. Although I always know what to say, I was struggling with being confident in terms of how to say what I need to say and how to express myself professionally. For example, doing a presentation for a team meeting was a big deal for me, but now I am more comfortable leading a zoom meeting for about 5-10 people or more. I just need to make a plan and go from there. It is all because of the practices that I have been doing as an intern. For this Spring semester, I am planning on taking more initiatives that can gives me more possibilities to be in charge of meetings and other related stuff. Taking these initiatives will help me to gain more experience and ability to build my self-confidence.