Goals & Learning

Success

Trustworthiness

A time that I have felt successful as an intern so far is when my supervisor, Dr. Enane praised me for helping compile perinatal and pediatric resources as well as completing steps for a quality improvement manuscript during my first site visit at the end of October. 

• Some actions I took were speaking to my supervisor, Dr. Enane, and effective time management. By managing my time effectively and completing my assigned tasks in an organized fashion, I've been able to complete many tasks, which have all been completed on time. 

• Time management is an important transferable skill that I will be able to use to stay on top of due dates for academic assignments, work, my assigned Jagathon tasks, and at my future internship sites. Staying on time and prioritizing work will help alleviate stress when managing and balancing different commitments, while maintaining a high quality of work. 

Additional Responsibilities

Another success I have experienced throughout my internship with Dr. Enane is added responsibilities and the trust that Dr. Enane has instilled in me. I have been added to an additional IRB study related to the East Africa region of the Tuberculosis Sentinel Research Network (TB-SRN) study of the International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA), underway in Kenya and Uganda, individuals with pulmonary TB are enrolled in a prospective cohort study. 

• They complete study visits with comprehensive data collection at initiation of TB treatment, during treatment, and in the post-treatment phase. As part of this study, qualitative interviews are being conducted with individuals with TB and with healthcare workers who provide TB and HIV care and treatment.

• Under the proposed project, we will specifically investigate barriers to TB care for AYAs in East Africa. As part of this we will explore areas for intervention, including peer support for AYAs with TB. 

• I will conduct dedicated research in qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with individuals with TB and with healthcare workers. This will involve reading qualitative transcripts, coding the transcripts together with other researchers on the team, and developing qualitative themes. 

• My work will focus on dedicated questions surrounding AYA TB care, while other analyses will investigate other research questions addressed in these qualitative interviews. The coded qualitative data and themes will be used to develop a qualitative paper, and may also inform further epidemiologic or mixed-methods analyses within the TB-SRN project. I will have a role in drafting a report of the qualitative data, and the opportunity for co-authorship on manuscript(s) from this work.

Confidentiality & Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Access

I was granted access to the IU Health electronic medical record to help decide the exclusion and inclusion of participants in our retrospective cohort study regarding pediatric and adolescent HIV diagnoses. I was afforded the opportunity to complete many trainings including CITI training, IU Health data compliance training, and IRB training. 

• The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI Program) is dedicated to serving the training needs of colleges and universities, healthcare institutions, technology and research organizations, and governmental agencies, as they foster the integrity and professional advancement of their learners'. It educates members, administrators, and organizational leadership of ethics committees and compliance entities to enable them to conduct their oversight and credentialing duties effectively, efficiently, and professionally.
 

• Earning these CITI Program credentials will allow me to understand IU Health data compliance and IRB standards, which are important to incorporate as an Epidemiology student involved in research. Abiding by the standards of CITI Programs allows me to use my training in practical, real-world settings when working with data in the EMR. 

Educational Journey

Through participating in the internship program requirements, I have been able to enhance my educational journey in numerous ways including exploring work values, teamwork with my peers, and establishing a well-organized ePortfolio that I could use for future employment opportunities. Engagement in this internship program has enabled me to gain hands-on experience, which is important as a tactile learner as well as learning to network with a larger network of medical professionals. 

• Being willing to work with a team of my peers would prepare me for future career opportunities in both a research and clinical setting. Building and establishing a well-organized ePortfolio is important to me, so it can capture the progression of my experience and skills learned at my internship site. The ePortfolio can also be a way to reflect on my work at my internship site as well as a tool to measure my growth. 

• Exploring the work values of working in a clinical research setting as well as providing clinical services to patients has allowed me to better understand the work of a physician-scientist. I genuinely enjoy learning, so receiving the opportunity to develop hands-on experience has bettered my learning experience. 

• While actively engaging in LHSI, I have increased my network with my peers by developing crucial communication and collaboration skills in the classroom as well. My LinkedIn connections have grown exponentially over the course of my time in the LHSI program and I have the ability to be exposed to new ideas, inventions, careers, and events through a great network of peers. 

Zotero

I learned how to use a program called Zotero, which has been beneficial for conducting research and literature views. Zotero helps me organize my research, sorts items into collections tags them with keywords, and creates saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as I work. 

• Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor and inside Google Docs or Word. Zotero lets Dr. Enane and I co-write a paper with a colleague, distribute course materials to students, or build a collaborative bibliography. 

• Zotero has been an invaluable resource that I will continue to use when conducting research. As you may see in the screenshot, I have used Zotero for my Environmental Health Sciences Epidemiology course and Maternal and Child Health assignments. 

Challenges

Literature Reviews

One of the most challenging parts of my internship experience so far is the numerous weeks of literature reviews. Literature reviews can be a little less engaging than data collection or viewing the electronic medical record, EMR. Reviewing research literature for weeks on end can get tiring and overwhelming at times. 

• Being tasked with literature reviews is a part of research and important for the creation of new research manuscripts. Some support I will seek to overcome this challenge as we move into the spring semester is taking more frequent breaks when doing literature reviews and supplementing some of the time with professional development or other tasks assigned to me. 

• Learning how to conduct literature reviews and the use of Zotero has been an invaluable resource that I will continue to use when conducting research. As you may see in the screenshot, I have used Zotero for my Environmental Health Sciences Epidemiology course and Maternal and Child Health assignments. 

• As an Epidemiology student, I have completed six literature reviews this semester, so I was able to use my experience and endurance to read through all the sources while sorting and filtering important themes or evidence to use to support my claim. Having these research skills are invalauble for conducting research, advancing the field of public health, and improving evidence-based recommendation implementation steps in the field of public health. 

CITI Research & Ethics Training 

Some challenging times were going through the CITI research and ethics training since there are so many modules. I had to work on my mental stamina and endurance to be able to complete the training in just a few hours. This took patience as you had to watch multiple videos, read passages, and comprehend the content provided by the CITI program. 

• Additionally, I was pushed to learn and grow more with the literature reviews. The literature reviews helped me gain a greater understanding of the barriers to adolescent HIV testing and current ways other pediatric health providers are helping to combat the lack of HIV testing in pediatric emergency rooms.

• The CITI trainings were helpful when being added to the IRB studies and helping to implement any evidence-based recommendations, such as community-based prevention programs for HIV or Maternal and Child Health mentioned with the use of Zotero. 

Electronic Medical Record Searches 

Another challenge focused on the work I do at my internship site is making conclusions for including or excluding participants by searching the electronic medical record, EMR. I was responsible for conducting 360 chart reviews on patients who received the same billing code to see if we should include or exclude them from our retrospective cohort study. This was a more time-consuming task because the location of the year these patients were diagnosed with HIV varied and was difficult to navigate on Cerner. 

• This has proven helpful in my future career as I begin to do work for the Indiana Department of Health in STI Prevention. I've been able to use my experiences with locating and navigating the electronic medical records to benefit my work as an STI Prevention Intern. For example, the first, original HIV diagnosis could be located in medical notes made by pediatric infectious disease medical providers or they could be determined by reading lab results from HIV antibody blood tests, but from patient to patient it varied. 

• My internship team and Dr. Enane have helped me overcome obstacles by actively listening to my concerns and using each other as a sounding board for ideas or remedies to help the situation and move forward. I can always bounce ideas off of Dr. Enane and she will provide her suggestions and ideas to the table. 

• This had proven helpful as I have been more vocal in my extracurricular activies like Jagathon: IUPUI's Dance Marathon and the Undergraduate Student Association Board for the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. I've been more open to ideas and expressing my own, knowning that my ideas are important and could benefit the organizations.