My Internship

Project Summary

Patients with sickle cell disease often face systemic barriers related to their healthcare. Utilizing several psychosocial screeners is one way that care teams can better understand and address these patients’ psychosocial and mental health needs. There are currently several psychosocial screening tools utilized by medical providers for pediatric patients living with a variety of acute and chronic illnesses. My work through LHSI involved compiling and analyzing data from multiple screeners utilized in the Pediatric Sickle Cell Center at Riley Hospital for Children: Pediatric Quality of Life Inventories (PedsQL), Patient Health Questionnaires-9 (PHQ-9), and Psychosocial Assessment Tools (PAT). These screeners are respectively designed to identify patient quality of life, symptoms of depression, and barriers to care for children living with sickle cell disease. In addition, I developed an updated REDCap database to record data related to the Sickle Cell Story Club, which provides free books to sickle cell patients of all ages and reading levels that promote positive themes, such as increasing self-confidence, as well as including characters from diverse backgrounds. Assisting with these projects allowed me to understand how caring for individuals with a chronic disease means understanding the disease’s impact on the whole patient to improve health outcomes. 

Learning and Skills

During my internship, I will utilize skills I have developed from previous employments and academic experiences such as my ability to persist through challenges and seek advice/assistance from more experienced team members, follow through on my commitments, respond positively to constructive criticism, etc. Additionally, I hope to improve my communication skills to become more confident and efficient when talking in front of groups and with supervisors/professors. I also look forward to building my application skills by referencing my past experiences to help me learn how to operate new online platforms, software, research procedures, etc. that will be used at my internship site.

Throughout my time as an LHSI intern, I hope to gain more proficient speaking skills when talking in group settings and to become better at prioritizing my responsibilities so I do not end up spending too much time on smaller, simpler tasks. Furthermore, I want to learn more about the clinical research process, the adversities that young patients with sickle cell disease experience, previous and present inequalities within the healthcare system, and about the different types of studies currently being conducted on sickle cell disease. I am most excited about helping with a study that analyzes the impact of sickle cell disease on pediatric patients' mental health and hopefully becoming involved with advocacy efforts for sickle cell disease. 

Some of the skills I have been utilizing frequently during my internship so far and feel I have improved upon include Independence and Problem-Solving and Perseverance. Besides attending weekly meetings, the tasks I have completed so far at my internship site have been completed on my own and at my own pace. Therefore, I feel I have improved my ability to delegate the tasks I need to complete each week and set my work schedule independently. Since my tasks so far have required me to work independently, I have been able to employ troubleshooting skills when encountering any issues with some of the new programs I have been using such as Cerner and Microsoft Teams. Moreover, I want to continue working on my skills relating to Communication and Confronting Challenges and Failures. In order to become less shy and be able to better engage in conversations during my site's weekly meetings, I plan to share more details about the tasks I have been working on and not be as hesitant to ask questions about the other active studies at my site. Additionally, I plan to ask if I could assist with any abstract or other forms of writing in the future since writing scientific papers is still a challenge for me. Thus, I hope that requesting tasks out of my comfort zone will help me to gain skills in overcoming work-related setbacks and to not be so afraid of failure. 

While completing tasks for my internship site, I have been able to learn a lot about the genetic origins of sickle cell disease, the different forms of sickle cell disease based on a patient's genotype, and have been able to learn some about the biological impacts sickle cell disease has on other body systems besides the circulatory system. This largely relates to many of the topics and main ideas covered in the biology courses that I am currently taking or have already completed. For example, I am currently taking a Genetics course and have been able to apply lessons on allele frequencies, inheritance patterns, etc. in understanding how sickle cell disease is passed down to new generations. Moreover, I can apply my work relating to sickle cell disease through LHSI to other biology courses such as when learning about other genetic disorders and their effects. I can also apply my experiences from LHSI to courses for my medical sociology minor, especially when exploring topics related to inequities in healthcare and the impacts of illness on mental health. 

During my first semester as an LHSI intern, I feel that I have grown professionally in regards to becoming more proficient in completing tasks that are more independently based and adjusting to working predominately alone, which has differed from previous employment experiences where I was constantly working with others. In addition, I feel that I am learning to be more efficient when communicating via email conversations or during weekly meetings with my supervisor and members of the research team. On a more personal level, I feel that I have started to improve my overall understanding of the current disparities in the U.S. healthcare system during my first semester as an intern by learning how many of the same barriers to medical care for sickle cell patients are present among primarily minority populations with a variety of other illnesses. 

Some of the skills I have learned this semester have included becoming more familiar with utilizing the Microsoft Teams platform, retrieving data from individual medical records stored in Cerner, employing troubleshooting techniques when looking for specific information from a patient's chart, and beginning to learn about manuscript writing. My favorite experience so far as an LHSI intern has included being able to attend collaborative meetings among both pediatric and adult sickle cell disease researchers at Riley Hospital for Children and IU Health where I have had the opportunity to learn about the plethora of sickle cell disease studies that are currently being conducted both through the IU Health system and in collaboration with other universities throughout the nation. 

The tasks I completed this year were largely for new research studies focused on analyzing the psychosocial impacts that sickle cell disease has on young patients and their families. One of my internship site's goals was to begin publishing and presenting the information from these studies at conferences, in scientific journals, etc. I assisted with retrieving and organizing data from screeners such as for depression, quality of life assessment, and psychosocial factors completed by sickle cell patients and/or their guardians receiving care at the Pediatric Sickle Cell Center with Riley Hospital for Children. By doing so, data trends and statistical analyses were able to be performed and many were significant enough to be included in abstracts for two national conferences and a manuscript. Both abstracts were accepted for the national conferences which will be occurring in May 2023, and there is enough statistically significant data from one of the screeners, the Psychosocial Assessment Tool (PAT), to produce a manuscript. Being very new to clinical research, I have learned how important it is for physicians to be able to share their research with other physicians and healthcare professionals around the nation such as at conferences and through research publications in order to improve outcomes for patients in every city across the United States. This is especially true for my supervisor and her team, as the psychosocial impacts of sickle cell disease on children is not a highly studied topic. Pediatric sickle cell patients are from predominantly underserved communities, and there is a very large need for more research, resources, and treatments for this patient population. Thus, being able to share research conducted at the Pediatric Sickle Cell Center at Riley Hospital for Children supports my supervisor and her team's mission of enhancing this awareness and promoting the development of more comprehensive healthcare clinics for sickle cell patients and their families across the U.S. that can provide mental health, social work, and financial resources in addition to physical care. By doing so, hopefully one day soon the additional mental health, social, and financial burdens that sickle cell disease can inflict upon pediatric patients and their families can be better addressed and alleviated on a global level. 

Over this past year, I feel that the skills from the self-reflection survey I have most often utilized at my internship site include Communication, Integration and Application, Independence, Problem-Solving and Perseverance, and Attendance and Punctuality. Utilizing my experience with these skills from my time as an LHSI intern will significantly help me hopefully in a career as a pediatrician someday by being able to effectively communicate with my colleagues, patients, and their caregiver, avoid burnout, not give up on finding treatment options for patients with complex medical issues, and to advocate for and support my patients. I still hope to grow my skills relating to Confronting Challenges and Failures so that I am not so fearful of failure. I have made some progress with this while participating with LHSI; however, I still find myself worrying about not successfully completing a task for my supervisor, and this is still one of my major worries in regard to my classes/academic performance. Following LHSI, I plan to begin my capstone project which will involve working in a Biology research laboratory throughout my remaining semesters at IUPUI, and I have accepted a new leadership position for next semester as an Honors Peer Mentor Leader with the Honors College. Although I have had previous experience with both of these positions during my freshman and sophomore year, I will be taking on a much greater role next academic year. I am hoping this will help me in working to overcome my fear of failure and be comfortable in taking on tasks where I may not succeed. In addition, both of these activities will help in further developing my Communication, Teamwork, and Constructive Criticism skills. 

The Workplace

While attending weekly meetings with the research team at my site, I have noticed how the clinical research specialist I have been working with and our supervisor are able to openly discuss any concerns, setbacks or changes to their timeline for completing tasks, and provide each other feedback. Gaining the ability share my personal thoughts and concerns in the workplace without hesitancy is an area I want to improve upon in order to become a better team member as well as a more effective employee. In addition, I want to work on reducing my shyness so that I can have greater opportunities to develop connections with future coworkers and supervisors to advance my professional development. 

When completing a task at my internship site, I initially work with the clinical research specialist on the research team to receive further instructions, learn how to navigate any new applications or software, etc. before completing the task on my own. At the beginning of my internship, I was a little intimidated and fearful to ask for help since the clinical research specialist has a much higher level of education than me and has a busy schedule due to her involvement with multiple studies at the clinic. However, I quickly realized that although our educational levels differed, the clinical research specialist has been wonderful in breaking down my assignments to teach me new applications/skills and has always been super supportive of my progress even if I made a mistake. Before beginning my internship, I was anticipating that my work schedule would be pretty strict and that most of my tasks would involve me directly working with other team members. During the first semester, I was grateful to work under a flexible schedule that varied by the week depending on the tasks I was working on, if I had any exams, etc. Also, I mainly completed tasks independently and on my own time after an initial meeting or email conversation with the clinical research specialist outlining the steps involved.

By working with my supervisor and her clinical research specialist, who have backgrounds and experiences different from my own, I have further confirmed how important it is to have a diverse team in the workplace. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity during some of our meetings to hear about some of their life experiences and listen to their views, especially those relating to social/economic and healthcare inequalities, which have been one of the main focuses of the research projects I have been assisting with. These opportunities also provided me the chance for professional growth by actively listening to and learning from my team members' stories as well as learning how to establish connections in the workplace. Establishing connections with my LHSI supervisor and her research team is important in my path toward attaining my career goals, as they could serve as potential references for future applications. In addition, my supervisor could provide me with some suggestions when I begin the application process for medical school based on her experiences. 

I am so thankful that my LHSI site had a very positive and encouraging workplace culture. Every member of my internship team was always so kind and is deeply passionate about the research being performed as well as improving the lives of pediatric sickle cell patients. I felt a very clear sense of purpose in the projects and work I was assigned, and I never felt hesitant if I needed to ask a question or receive some assistance with a task. Overall, the workplace culture at my LHSI site pretty much aligns exactly with my ideal workplace culture. The only difference is that I believe I would prefer a more in-person setting at my long-term workplace in the future. However, the remote setting with my internship site ended up working out better than I could have ever imagined due to my inability to physically be on campus most of this school year because of unexpected medical issues. 

Success and Challenges

A success I have experienced so far has been when I completed gathering and compiling data from patients' medical charts in a large spreadsheet. Completing this spreadsheet was exciting for me, as I was able to directly see how the data I pulled was going to be used in the research study I am currently assisting with. Additionally, this was my first time working on data for a clinical research project involving current patients, treatments, etc. In order to ensure I was collecting the data correctly for the spreadsheet, I met with the clinical research specialist on the research team and wrote thorough notes and asked questions about steps I was unfamiliar with before beginning to access and pull data from patients' medical charts. 

The most challenging aspect of my internship so far has involved learning how to navigate and efficiently use computer programs and applications that were new to me. For instance, I did not have any prior experience with the program (Cerner) that Riley Hospital utilizes for patients' medical charts. Initially, it was a bit difficult for me to navigate Cerner, as I am used to using a different program (Epic) when accessing patient charts when working at Norton Audubon Hospital. Another challenge involved learning how to access and edit files or documents in Microsoft Teams since I had only utilized programs in the Google suite previously. Going forward, I will ensure that I am less hesitant about reaching out to either the clinical research specialist or my site supervisor if I am struggling with a certain function on Cerner and other new programs I may use in the future for extracting data. In regards to learning how to utilize Microsoft Teams more efficiently, I plan to look for free online tutorials when I am unsure of the formatting, features, organization, etc. within Microsoft applications.