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For my Life Health Science Internship site, I am working with Dr.Loghmani to research consistency of soft tissue massage along with the pain threshold with specific tools. For a look into what types of tools are used and how the massage is done, watch the video linked below!
What we do primarily is complete treatment on a patient, measuring force applied, how many strokes, angle of stroke, etc. to get all the statistics on how the clinician is treating patients. This data then allows us to see if multiple clinicians are treating patients the same way.
Learning and Skills
Learning and Skills
This experience is giving me the opportunity to understand how these small research teams work. I am able to see the inner workings of a lab and all that is required to make a study like this work. I am able to fine tune my organizational skills and learn to work better as a team. I am hoping to learn more about the different roles in health care and how to be best equipped to help in my future career.
Compared to my classes, this has been a significantly new and exciting experience for me. This internship has however shown me how Biostatistics is applied in the real world which is something I was struggling to understand in that class until now. Before this internship, I felt like the class was pushing me to learn things I wasn't prepared for and wasn't going to use in the future but now I understand how important biostatisticians are to the research community and how the data that they work to organize can increase the understanding of a study. Not only that but I was able to apply the information learned in class to better analyze data and make contributions to the research team when they are discussing the results of the study.
From my experiences in my past volunteering, I have learned about working closely with other people so I was not shocked when I began to work with patients. I was able to apply the skills of patience and understanding that I learned in the past to help calm the nerves of patients and help them feel at ease. With that, I have pushed those skills even further through this position and am not more comfortable speaking outwardly and explaining what is going on so that the subject knows and understands each step of the testing process. These communication skills will help me in my future career working with patients and staff to run a hospital, long-term care, or other health facility.
During the first semester of my internship, I learned so many valuable skills that I will be able to apply during my professional life. I learned the value to delegating different pieces of the work so that the best results can come from it. This is important in playing to people's strengths to be more efficient. I also learned the value of being a leader is some situations and being more of a member in other situations.
One of my favorite experiences so far has been getting to know the other members of the research team. I have learned about their persistence and determination in both school and work and how to best manage your time to get everything you need completed, done. Before Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with the members of the team which increased what I knew of them and how many extracurriculars they are doing outside of being a full time graduate student and working. I appreciate that the team is always willing to include me in activities despite being much younger than them and their willingness to teach me when I need help in the lab.
This semester, I have learned a lot more about data analysis. I have spent more time this semester organizing data and understanding exactly what it means. I have had the opportunity to analyze a whole section of the research we have done and see how the data correlates to each other. This experience has helped me better understand exactly what it looks like to be behind the research that you see through different papers and organizations.
Overall, this experience has shown me what my future career could look like and different skills that are expected from me as the time comes. My skills are always improving in the lab and I am looking forward to growing them more.
The Workplace
The Workplace
I have had the opportunity to work with not only doctors and professors but also graduate students which I think has been a great opportunity to see students working in a professional workplace. I have learned how patient they are with those that are wanting to learn more about the study (primarily me) but also how concise they are about getting said what they need people to know. I have also been learning how just because you’re a professional, that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your work and be passionate about what you do. As a professional I want to grow in patience and understanding with others and overall acting as a professional, even as an intern.
I had no idea what to expect when going into this internship. I assumed that I would be doing busy work like getting coffee and making copies, but it has been so much more than that. I have instead learned how to work with patients to make them more comfortable, collect data, and analyze this data to apply it to the real world.
I've been pleasantly surprised as to how kind and caring the people I work with are. I started out fairly nervous being the youngest member of the team but I was graciously brought on board and thrown right in. I have also been surprised about how the day-to-day tasks are often very similar each time the patient comes in and the plan for each one. It has taught me however all about the world of Physical Therapy and how important the work being done is and how even through administration, I can be an impact.
If you would like to know more about what I do in my site, flip through the slides below! The presentation explains what the overall goal of the lab is and what my daily tasks look like.
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