My Internship

Within this internship, I will use my pre-existing skills, but hope to improve on some that are not as apparent. I will use my communication skills, my ability to work within teams, and my problem solving skills to excel during this internship. However, I do hope to improve upon my independence within the workplace and my ability to take constructive criticism. I also hope to improve on my ability to use complex systems on computers as I am not as efficient as I would like to be. 

As I close out September within this internship, my goals regarding my skill set remains the same. I still hope to become more independent and efficient on computer systems that I am unfamiliar with. With that being said, the tasks involved in this internship are perfect for expanding on these goals. I am excited to learn more about programs like Cerner and Redcap, which I will be using within my internship. I am also excited to expand on my independence as I will have to conduct calls with patients on my own without any supervision. This information collected and stored will be used for future projects that I am also excited to work on in the near future. 

October has allowed me to work on my communication skills and my organizational skills. As my internship team begins to start up on projects that were previously slow to start, I am starting to be able to communicate more about what my roles are on the team and what I would like to achieve with regards to the projects at hand. I am also becoming more refined in my organizational skills as I have to balance work, school, life, and my internship at the same time. I feel as if I am doing this quite well and feel successful in this area. As projects within my internship continue, I would like to work on my independence within the workplace. Once I become confident in my tasks and duties, I know I will be able to showcase my independence more clearly.

November has allowed me to begin making connections from within my internship to course work I am having at IUPUI. Currently I am an epidemiology major at IUPUI and I have seem a lot of correlation between my coursework and internship. A big reason as to why I chose this internship is because of the household material hardship and health literacy research projects they offered. Both of these topics are extremely important to public health and being able to practice the research collection and analyzation through these projects is very interesting. Public health focuses a lot on interpretation and implementation of research, but to be able to look at research from a different perspective has been really cool to me. My internship also relates to my coursework through the topics of surveillance. Surveillance is close observation of groups of people for a certain reason and it is a huge part of public health. Being able to see surveillance within a hospital setting being used for public health data has also been interesting to watch and engage with. These connections help me gain a deeper understanding for my course work as it shows me how what I'm studying in the real world. 

As I continued on into my spring semester, I was still able to make connections between my internship and some of the courses I have been taking this semester. Within this spring semester, I have been enrolled in a class that discusses how public health traces diseases if an outbreak of an infectious disease occurs. This could be any disease from e. coli to ebola. Anyways, after a medical diagnosis is confirmed patients are asked a series of questions usually over the phone by public health officials at the public health department. Relating back to my internship, usually it is very hard for public health officials to get in contact with the patients with the disease to learn more about where they contracted it from. Patients either dont recognize the number, or are just not interested in talking. This was displayed during my internship whenever I began cold calling patients. Due to my calls usually being done on my own personal cell, the response rates were usually extremely low due to people not wanting to deal with a foreign number. This puts into perspective how difficult it may be for public health officials to contain and identify an outbreak of any disease because response rates from the ones with the disease are usually super low. Due to this, little information is usually received and little action can be taken. 

Upon conclusion of the semester as an intern, I've learned a lot about research in the real world. I've been shown how hard it is to manage time as a practitioner, parent, and researcher. I've learned and been shown how rewarding it is to be able to collect data and see correlations after a long period of time. I've learned the lessons on transparency and communication within the workplace as speaking up has given me more opportunities to be independent within my studies. Though this semester was rocky at first due to a slow start within my research, I am excited to begin next semester and see how else I can grow as a student and future professional. 

As I continued to work into the second semester, I began to learn more about how my contributions impacted the larger project of my internship team. Throughout this semester, my main job has been to cold call a list of patients from a prewritten script to recruit them for the research study being conducted by my supervisor. Though it doesn't feel as if my job is very important as I continue to get no answers or no new assignments, I know that my job right now is a large part of the future bigger picture. Eventually, my internship sites goal was to have a better understanding of how public health factors can impact the patient experience so future support can be offered to the families at Riley. This cannot be done without receiving the surveys from the families at Riley, which cannot happen without me cold calling them. This goes to show that even though my role does not feel important at the moment, in the grand scheme of things, I am doing very important work for the results wanted from this study. Through cold calling, one of the main things that I learned is that patient participation is hard to get in research. The patients do not owe me anything, so convincing them to take time out of their day to be a part of a study was a hard to master. 

After completing my final self-evaluation, I have come to the conclusion that there are still areas in which I wish to grow in before the conclusion of the LHSI program. One thing that I really want to work on before this internship is over is more independent working and thinking despite not really enjoying the tasks at hand. As mentioned above, a-lot of what I am doing right now involves cold calling people in order to recruit them to a research study. This task is not the most enjoyable for me as a-lot of the times it ends in patients being put at unease with the phone call or just no answer at all. This has caused me to slow down my work for the internship as a whole. However, I need to realize how my work is a part of the bigger picture and I can still work efficiently before this internship ends. So, before my time with LHSI is over, I hope that I become able to work harder for the internship more independently despite not really enjoying the task at hand. 

Upon conclusion of LHSI, I am happy to have had this experience that allowed me to use and/or build on my existing strengths. Strengths that I was confident that I held in the beginning of the internship include communication skills, my ability to work within teams, and my problem solving skills. My communication skills were used in every aspect of this internship, wether it be with patients or with my team. Good communication allowed for the internship to flow smoothly as no-one was confused on their roles and duties as a team mate and/or patient.  My ability to work within a team was showcased in the beginning of my internship when I was asked to shadow and be a part of patient clinics by my supervisors. Teamwork was used as every person in the clinic room had a role and it was their job as a teammate to fulfill that role. More often times than not, my role was to observe and make notes on what I have learned for future reference. As the internship continued and my work became more independent, teamwork was used less and less. However, that does not dwindle the fact that it is important to remain a good teammate no matter your responsibilities and/or roles. My problem solving skills were used within the internship a-lot as well. While cold-calling, I had difficulties with patient response rates. This made me test out a few different methods to increase response rates. Different methods used included calling at certain hours, certain days of the weeks, or from an office phone. The problem solving skills showcased here overall increased response rates in the end!

As a professional and teammate, my team has shown a lot of transparency with what is going on in shadowing hours and within their research projects. This has allowed me to properly be able to see what it is like to be a clinician and a researcher, the glorifying parts and the hard parts. The glorifying parts include seeing improvements within the children you are working with and being able to see what a big impact you can have on them are. Some of the hard parts I have witnessed by working within my internship site include the practitioners having a lot on their plates at one time, patients not being compliant even though it is in their best interest, and having to halt projects due to outside associations including the IRB. My team has also been very good with responding to any questions, comments, or concerns that I have had along the way. This has helped me be able to learn more about their career in a more personal way. I hope to be able to show this sort of transparency and communication in the future with any collogues that I may have as its a good skillset to have as a professional. Currently, I am wishing to grow in my dependability and independence as a teammate within my internship team. These skills are particularly important to me because being fluent in these skills can provide bigger and better opportunities in my future. 

As I have never been involved in research, an internship, or opportunities within a hospital, I was not sure as to what I was expecting from this internship. However, I can say it is not exactly what I had conjured it up in my head to be (and that is not a bad thing)! One thing that I was not expecting within this internship is it to be so reliant on my own scheduling, and not someone else for me. As a student with a job, I have always been given a work or class schedule and have been expected to adhere to it. However, this internship is fully reliant on me to schedule when I want to go, for how long, and what I want to do for the day. I can say that that has been difficult for me to get used to.  Another way this internship is different than what I expected it to be is with the amount of independence I have within it. After being shown how to do certain things once or twice within the hospital, I am expected to conduct research fully by myself. I can say I appreciate this as independence is something I have wanted to work on for awhile. 

Through working at my internship, I have come in contact with a lot of different people with different backgrounds, cultures, educational levels, majors, etc.. as me. One thing that I have learned from this is to embrace everyone's differences as it allows us to all bring something different and unique to the table. I have enjoyed working with and learning about the backgrounds of those I work with and I hope to continue to learn and expand my knowledge on it as I continue to grow as a professional.

After an extended time of interacting with people within my internship site, it is apparent that our educational and professional backgrounds are different. This is to be expected as the majority of the people I come in contact with at my internship are medical practitioners of some sort while I am still a student. With that in mind, I like to learn from them when it comes to advice regarding my future profession or work ethic in general. My internship leads and their colleagues have successful careers, so any advice or skills that I can learn from them could help me and my future. My beliefs have not changed due to my internship, but my attitude towards my future career and work ethic have greatly improved due to this opportunity. These interactions help me grow into a stronger future professional as I continue to grow into that role. 

The workplace cultures and values at my internship site are very apparent given the location of my internship site. As my internship site is in a hospital, the workplace values and cultures revolve around doing best for the patients and people within the hospital system. This includes spending extended time getting to know their patients personally so they can give the best care, researching new methods of care in order to stay up to date with their practices, and going above and beyond to improve health outcomes for past, present, and future patients at Riley. This is a great work culture to be involved in, especially since hospitals are all about improving patient health. With being a public health major, I appreciate and look for this type of work culture and value set as a look for a future career. With hospitals being patient focused, I hope my future work culture to be public health focused. However, I dont want my future job to be within a hospital setting like my internship. I have learned through this internship that hospitals aren't the ideal location for my future career, even though the mindset and culture involved does align with my values. Hopefully I can find a career in my future that has the same values and culture, just a different location and job title!

Successes

Though I have experienced a lot of good things through my internship, some of my greatest successes include gaining the trust of my team and being able to work more independently. To gain the trust of my team, I continued to show great attendance and interest in what they were showing me. Eventually, they began to trust my abilities as a student and an intern within their program. As I began to build their trust, they have allowed me to work more independently on their studies as they know I am doing it properly and fully for them. 

Through working more within my internship, I have been able to experience a lot more successes. One of my biggest successes so far is being able to finally recruit patients for the research studies that has been approved by the IRB after much anticipation. Within this, I am to call a set list of patients with a script and recruit them via email to fill out surveys for the research study. Alongside this, I must have knowledge on the studies I am recruiting them for as I must be able to answer any questions that come my way. These studies will eventually be turned into a manuscript after analyzation of the data received. From this success, I have learned that with patience comes rewards. After anxiously waiting for all of the "quirks" to be worked out by my supervisor, I have finally be able to work within the studies that I am interested in. I can apply this to my academic and career goals as all good things may take time and I may not get the results that I want immediately. However, immediate success does not mean failure and I need to remember that as I progress through my academics and into my career. 

Through working more within my internship, I have been able to experience successes. One of my biggest successes so far is being able to see the numbers in recruited patients rise for the research studies I am working within. Though I wasn't able to receive enough responses to draw conclusions and create a manuscript, I was still excited to see the numbers in patients rise as the research fails to cease. From this success, I have learned that small successes are still success. Though my hopes of creating a manuscript didn't come into fruition, the small wins that I felt after I learned a new patient has filled out the surveys was eventually enough for me.

Challenges

Some of the most challenging parts of this internship so far has been general communication. Though I am good at communicating in general, in the professional world this is a whole different thing. Some examples of when I have struggled to communicate have been situations like when am I to show up to the internship site, how much am I expected to be doing independently, and what if I don't feel like I am learning anything? Though these are common concerns with a lot of interns, I feel as if I am "stepping on toes" by addressing them with my supervisor. Next semester, I hope to feel secure enough in my abilities as an intern to where I don't feel like a bother addressing these concerns with my supervisor. I know I have already come a long way from the beginning of the internship experience, but the continuation of growth would be nice to have. 

As I progress more through the internship, there does seem to be challenges that arise. With now being able to recruit patients to the research study on my own time, one of the challenges that has arose is that I now had to have to become better with my time management skills. The reason why I need to become better within my time management skills is so I can recruit as much patients in my free time as possible while still being able to succeed in my life as a student. One thing that my internship supervisors have done to help me overcome this challenge is allot time into my week where I go "on-site" and complete hours as a scheduled part of my week. I am still able to recruit more patients "off-site" through my week if I have time, but the scheduled "on-site" time allows me to have ease in my time management day to day as I already have allotted time in my week for the internship already.

Upon conclusion of this internship, there did seem to be some challenges as I continued my internship through the spring. One of the challenges that arose is that I often felt unmotivated to participate in the internship due to the lack of success I have had with cold-calling patients. My main task within this internship is that I was responsible for the recruitment of patients to fill out a survey. I did this by cold-calling them at various points in the day to retrieve their emails if they were willing to participate. Due to fear of spam calls or busy schedules , a-lot of patients failed to answer their phone. Though this was to be expected, it felt often discouraging to go throughout my internship with little success. Due to this, I often felt unmotivated to participate. However, I persevered and continued my internship despite the common lack of response. Through this I adapted and learned ways to continue despite little success. I learned through these challenges that I have a strong work ethic and can/will perservere regardless of the results I am given.