My Internship
Experience Blog
In this section, I will be documenting my experiences throughout the year. This is meant to help me reflect upon my growth and document my experiences.
Autism Study with Dr. Fodstad
8/28/20: For my internship, I will be working with Dr. Fodstad and her research for individuals with autism. The purpose of this study is to create a training program for healthcare staff in emergency psychiatric settings to better help kids with autism while at the hospital. This includes information for the staff so that they can have a better understanding and training on how to best help the child. Currently, individuals with autism experience higher medical bills, longer hospital stays, are more likely to be readmitted for the same problem, and they receive poorer care. With the training guide we will be creating, we hope to lessen these disparities.
Why I Chose this Site?
8/28/20: This site was appealing for me because of the end goal of Dr. Fodstad's study. My career ambitions include becoming an Occupational Therapist that helps people with special needs. Many of my future patients will have autism, so when I saw her study about helping this population, I was intrigued to say the least. I am excited to continue to broaden my knowledge about autism and proper treatment practices.
Building Experience
8/28/20: Currently, I do not have any professional experience with research. I am hoping to develop a strong base on how research is conducted, gain insight on a topic that is interesting to me, and building transferable skills that will help me in my future career.
My Role
10/25/20: As the semester has progressed, I have started to understand my role and importance to this research team. Our study is currently in the recruitment phase, which means I am responsible for making recruitment phone calls. This is a great opportunity for me to develop my communication skills. Once we have participants, it will be my job to conduct interviews with the participants to obtain key information for developing a care plan. Along with this, I am learning more about autism through related research articles.
My Growth
12/6/20: It is now the end of first semester and the halfway point of my sophomore year. Through my internship, I have experienced tremendous growth. I have built relationships with my coworkers which will be a great networking opportunity for my future career. My communication skills have increased through my phone interviews and weekly meetings. I truly feel like I belong on my research team and I know I am making a difference. Looking forward, I am excited to conduct participant interviews in the coming weeks as well as work on my end of year project.
Success and Challenges
1/22/21: As 2021 bring in the new semester, my internship site work has picked up where it left off. Over our winter break, I had the opportunity to conduct my very first participant interview! I was very nervous during this process but felt confident afterwards. As the semester progresses, I will continue to practice these interview skills and hopefully become even more confident. I felt like I did a good job of asking follow up questions. Another thing I feel that I have been successful with has been my communication. I have been able to communicate with my supervisor about my schedule, class load, and availability. I am grateful to have such a flexible supervisor that allows me to work around my schedule. The most challenging thing up to this point for me has been the start of my systematic review paper. This is going to be my end of year project but it has taken a lot of extra work. I formulated a question that I wanted to answer and now I am learning how to use MeSH terms to find related research articles. This has been challenging for me because it is something I have never done before and is a little bit confusing. My supervisor has been there to support me and I have also scheduled a meeting with the research librarian to help point me in the right direction.
Ups and Downs
2/26/21: Through my work at this internship site, I have come to realize a certain truth when it comes to research: nothing goes 100% as planned. Since we are in the interview phase of the project, much of our focus has gone to recruiting participants. This has become an increasingly difficult task because of Covid-19 changing traditional recruitment methods. This has forced us to be creative with our recruitment methods. Myself along with Nicole are responsible for managing our site Facebook page and checking advertisement analytics. These are skills that no one at the lab had before, but we have been forced to be flexible. Another unexpected problem that our lab has faced is lack of commitment/responsiveness from participants. For example, we have had several people cancel by not showing up to interviews or failing to respond to emails. This is frustrating because we must reach a certain number of participants before we can proceed into the next phase of the research. We have overcome this challenge by continuing with good communication and trying to keep a positive attitude.
Future Funding
3/1/21: Through my time here with this internship, my professional skills have been developed tremendously. With there only being 2 more months of LHSI, I am not ready to leave my internship. This has caused me to start searching for funding options for after LHSI. I have applied for a summer research grant through the Autism Science Foundation and I found out today that I was awarded the grant! This will allow me to continue my research over the summer.