My research team researches palliative care and the main focus is on researching decision making, and informing consent. We code on patients charts and analyze if the given care was consented or not. 

Showcase Summary

The background for my project is to determine patient demographics, clinical characteristics, and outcomes associated with documented goals of care conversations (GOCC) prior to having a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube placement.

Elevator Pitch Visual

Learning and Skills 

I want to gain confidence and work on professional skills from this internship. I have a lot of room for growth in confidence because I consider myself shy in some areas and I can definitely work on that. I hope to be more confident in speaking up and as well as work on communication skills in the workforce. Some technical skills I can learn for my future career is medical coding in the health field. Some transferable skills I can improve and use is critical thinking and adaptability. I am most excited to grow as a professional and see the real-world view of things and knowing I am contributing!

Currently I am using the skill of adaptability and using my knowledge. From working in the healthcare field, a lot of the medical language is familiar and helps me pick up from what my team is talking about. I am using my adaptability by putting myself out there to do tasks out of my comfort zone and helps me learn and grow from my mistakes. 

My internship fits into what I'm learning in class by allowing me to integrate what I learn into the "real world". I can talk to doctors and researchers that help me get a grasp into things where I am struggling at. My internship can help me gain a deeper understanding of my coursework by talking to my research team because some have taken the same courses as me and it is very helpful to have them as mentors. Also some material in what we research comes into play with some of my courses I take such as palliative care. 

Now that it is spring, my internship does correlate a lot with second semester classes. A lot of the nursing courses teach you on how to be a professional in the real work setting. My classes also lecture on collaborating with everyone on your team to help patients get the best possible care. I have been able to integrate and relate back the information I learned into my internship team. I try to use a lot of what I have learned in class in my internship work setting. 

My contributions helped impact the larger project and our internship team by helping out with little details. The little details in projects go a long way because it makes up the larger portion of the project itself. 

The Workplace

As a professional/teammate I want to be the leader that makes sure everyone knows what they are doing and is not afraid to ask questions. I want them to feel comfortable and not stressed. I want to grow in communication and being a resource to my team. 

I have learned so much from working with my teammates, they all have different experiences and backgrounds in their education career that I find really impressive and unique. It is also very useful because they all have different knowledge in different topics that helps in collaborating and seeing different minds come together. 

My beliefs and attitude from working with other with different knowledge backgrounds has made me expand my learning. I enjoy it because I learn something new each time we interact. It adds to my knowledge and skills. I have grown as a professional because of all the different knowledge I have gained from my teammates.  

The workplace culture and values of my internship is a lot of dedication. We have plans to get work done and meet on a regular basis. We are there to help each other and lift each other up. 

Success and Challenges 

As an intern, there have been times where I felt successful and accomplished. I learned how to medical code and although it was hard at first I got the hang of it eventually. We practiced a lot of coding and then went on our own to code documents. I never though this would be something I'd be doing or that it was even a thing and has definitely been one of my bigger accomplishments. 

A new success I can add is that my team is presenting at a convention soon! We get to present the new research we have done and I am very excited for it. I can use this in my future by using the professional presenting skills I gain. 

Some challenges in my experience has been time management and understanding. On my busy school weeks where I had exams and also meetings with other organizations I am apart of it was difficult to manage getting everything done. The support I will use to seek out to overcome my challenges is to communicate about my struggles to my team and resolve them. I will also come up with a weekly schedule to time manage and get certain things done in timely manner in the spring semester. 

My research team helped me overcome the anxiety of sharing my opinions. I share my thoughts and opinions to my research team more. I have been able to get out of my comfort zone and collaborate when needed. It can be scary at first because I am afraid of being wrong, but I have learned that it is okay to not always know everything and to learn from your mistakes. What I have learned about myself during this year, is that it takes time for me to adapt and to conquer my challanges. At the end of the day I get them done but in a more slow time manner. It is something I have tried to improve on and throughout the school year I did see some progress.