Internship

About the Internship

The goal of the Ryan White Pediatric Infectious Disease Center is to address gaps in perinatal and pediatric HIV care in Indiana. There's an emphasis on HIV educational resources for children, adolescents, and families affected by HIV and health care providers. I'm currently working on a manuscript and research regarding systems, quality improvement in the Riley Emergency Department, diagnoses, and challenges regarding HIV care and testing in pediatric emergency rooms. We're also evaluating and analyzing the impacts of COVID-19 on pediatric and adolescent HIV diagnoses in Indiana. As a result of this work, the team at the Ryan White Pediatric Infectious Disease Center hopes to increase access to HIV care and provide out-in testing for pediatric emergency departments in the state of Indiana, starting with Riley Hospital for Children. The Ryan White Center for Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Global Health at IU School of Medicine has its own inpatient service, and treats over 600 inpatients and 1800 outpatients every year. 

Abstract

Riley Hospital for Children is the main provider of pediatric HIV care to children and adolescents living with HIV in Indiana. My focus in this internship has been to investigate implementation challenges in HIV testing and care for children and adolescents in this setting. This has included collaborating in a retrospective cohort study of children and adolescents with HIV, evaluating trends in HIV diagnoses before and after 2020, and identifying missed opportunities for prevention or earlier testing and treatment. In related work, I am also supporting efforts to increase adolescent HIV testing in the ED setting, and I have developed a set of educational resources for children, adolescents, and families affected by HIV and their providers. This work has included an emphasis on social determinants of health, and addressing quality improvement and clinical challenges that impact pediatric HIV testing and care. As a result of this work, the team at the Ryan White Center for Pediatric Infectious Disease and Global Health hopes to better address needs in this setting to improve adolescent HIV testing and prevention and address challenges across the prevention and treatment cascades for perinatal and pediatric HIV.

Workplace

Organization & Time Management

One of my current strengths that I can contribute to my internship site is my organization and time management skills. These skills go hand in hand with me, I keep an organized schedule and task list of everything that needs to be accomplished each day. This allows me to balance my time with extracurricular activities, volunteering, coursework, social time, and my job as a teaching assistant. I use timelines and deadlines to effectively turn in assignments before the deadlines and complete grading to provide student feedback. 

Communication

Another strength I can contribute to my internship site is communication. Communication is an important community component because of its nonverbal and verbal feedback. As a Teaching Assistant for the IUPUI Fairbanks School of Public Health in the Epidemiology department, I have communicated and collaborated with faculty to prepare learning materials. I also have experience providing prompt and friendly feedback to students and faculty using different methods like in-person communication, Zoom, Canvas, and Outlook email. Communicating effectively has allowed me to make minimal communication errors, learn from other’s perspectives, and remain tolerant of others' differences. 

Leadership

Similarly, leadership is another strength I can contribute to my internship site. I take initiative and do what is expected of me while conducting research. My contributions impacted the larger project, goals, and mission of my internship team by doing more of the time-consuming labor like literature reviews and electronic medical record reviews. These tasks are delegated to me and have allowed me to see the bigger picture of research, including all of the components that compose a manuscript for future publication. My efforts, no matter how small or routine, matter to getting the 'bigger job' done because I'm learning new skills, creating evidence-based recommendations, and analyzing different quality improvements that will later be implemented in the Riley Hospital for Children's Emergency Room and beyond. I like to look at the work that I do as a smaller puzzle piece to the bigger puzzle. 

Networking

I have grown as a professional this year through networking. Networking and connecting with other people can help prepare me for a career as a future physician-scientist because it would allow me to work with other people and build off of other ideas. Mentorships with professionals can foster on-the-job training and experiences not otherwise taught in a classroom. Also, real-life experiences from Dr. Enane can give me guidance toward career paths and graduate opportunities. I have been able to work with a medical school fellow, Kirsten, who has helped guide me in EMR reviews and the medical school process. As a prospective medical school applicant, research provides a foundation for hypothesis-driven infectious disease research. The collection of the information learned from my research would enhance my understanding of social health determinants. As an aspiring physician-scienist, understanding, writing, and contributing to manuscripts plays an important role in the research literature. By researching infectious diseases in pediatrics, I can learn by comprehending others’ viewpoints and coming to conclusions. 

Decision-Making 

Furthermore, participating in HIV research would help me with making better decisions, and decision-making based on evidence, and research would help improve my hypothesis formation process. I would like to continue to grow in hard skills that can be used in research like learning how to come up with analysis and methodology in writing. Teams benefit from diverse perspectives to solve problems and innovate. While working with people who have perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds that are different from my own, I have learned to develop empathy, expand my thinking, and increase creativity. Making the effort to understand different perspectives builds empathy. I feel like empathy has nurtured the trust and responsibilities given to me at my internship site. 

Critical Thinking

I have expanded my critical thinking by learning about pediatric and adolescent HIV/AIDS as well as other infectious diseases like tuberculosis. I have not been exposed to adolescent HIV, so it was interesting to learn about pediatric infectious diseases from Dr. Enane because it's such a niche background. I have increased my creativity by researching and brainstorming quality improvements to implement opt-out HIV testing in the pediatric emergency room at Riley Hospital for Children. These perspectives contribute to the success of the team because they help to create a complex understanding of the evidence-based recommendations already in place and navigate challenges that we may face while researching like inclusion or exclusion principles in a study.