Learning and Skills
What I Hope to Gain From the Internship
My strengths in customer service will be beneficial in working directly with the patients at this site. Also, this internship experience will allow me to gain more confidence going into my career. I can add variety in both my problem-solving and leadership skills by finding opportunities that are new to me. Along with this, I will be able to gain more flexible interpersonal skills while working in different settings.
The experience that I hope to gain from this internship is skills that I can carry to assist me in my professional career. From working on the unit at the CRC, I hope to develop nursing skills as well as skills that help me improve my demeanor as a professional. While working alongside and being mentored by healthcare professionals, I want to develop a rapport with them that I can carry on throughout my undergraduate studies and to my pursued career. I also would like to learn tasks that the nurses do on the unit so that I can prepare to learn those skills in the classroom and during clinical. I hope to contribute my current knowledge as a nursing student to working on the unit and interacting with patients. I believe that my history of working as a team member will allow me to be a helpful contribution to the nurses on the unit.
Fall Semester Learning
As of right now, I fell that this internship is helping me get ahead of my coursework. As a nursing student I learn skills such as taking vitals; documenting; and AIDET, which is nursing communication behaviors. I can practice those skills on the unit for every protocol and/or when the flowsheets require vital signs to be taken. In addition to this, I am learning basic nursing skills while on the unit that I will learn later in my coursework. The nurses are teaching me new skills, such as how to draw blood, insert an IV, and use/understand an EKG. I can use the new skills I learn on the unit to have a previous understanding for my future classes. For the administration aspect of my internship, I am learning how healthcare operates outside of patient care and how it correlates with patient care. While this does not directly go along with my coursework, learning this side of health care will allow for me to understand the innerworkings of the healthcare system that nurses need to know.
Fall Semester Review
Because of the variety of research at this site, I have yet to understand most of the reasons for the protocols that I am working on. I hope to be able to work on a number of protocols enough so that I can gain an understanding of why the resources and services from the unit are needed and how they are used to benefit the protocol. I am excited to continue to gain new skills that I can carry with me throughout the rest of my undergraduate studies and as a professional. While working on the unit, I am eager to receive feedback from the nurses to help shape me into a professional and proficient nurse.
During my admin sessions, I have been able to display a level of independence when my supervisor assigns me tasks to do on my own. In doing this, I practice coming up with solutions to obstacles independently. On the unit, I have been able to analyze and evaluate situations based on previously understood concepts and experiences. I can now say that I am more confident in taking the initiative to perform tasks on my own. On the other hand, I am still learning what it means to work within a professional team and understanding my roles. Through taking the time to communicate and ask questions about my responsibilities, I will be able to develop stronger teamwork skills within healthcare professions. As an intern who is learning in a new field, I tend to struggle with knowing how to confront challenges. Observing how my mentors handle and prevent challenges will allow me to implement those strategies over time.
Spring Semester Learning
As an intern I have learned the importance of working in a team of professionals. Being a part of a clinical team vs. an administrative team has shown me that teams work differently based on specific needs. For example, administration and clinical staff have similar goals for time efficiency and task quality, but each team may need to make adjustments to accommodate other variables. Throughout my time working within these two groups, I have learned that my mentors are always happy to help me with tasks because they want me to succeed and become proficient in my future career. With this, I understand the significance of being a qualitative team member through my own experiences and observation of the staff at my internship site.
Spring Semester Review
I have many great experiences during my time of being an intern at the CRC, but I would say that my favorite experiences are for each time I am able to gain or perform a new skill. I am lucky enough to work at my site mentored by staff of the profession that I am passionate about. They have given me many opportunities to gain a sense of independence while performing my newly-learned skills, such as inserting IVs or recording EKGs. I also enjoy being able to talk to the patients, or research participants, and understand why they have chosen to become a part of a study. Lastly, one of the most interesting experiences I have had was being a research participant myself because I was able to view another perspective of the CRC. These experiences are definitely memorable, and will follow me as I work toward my future career.
My Contributions
At my site, I was able to make contributions to the CTSI as a whole through working directly on the unit and on the administration side. My typical jobs on the unit varied from maintaining the quality of the clinical environment to actively participating in a study. Although it may mot seem like an important job, making sure that supplies were well stocked and not expired is crucial to promoting accuracy in clinical research. i also was able to participate in studies by following the procedures as an intern as well as engaging as a study participant myself. These were important contributions, as I made sure the studies were being performed accurately and as I aided in increasing the data for the studies that I participated in. Without the work from the administrative team, the CRC would not bi in commission. I contributed to this by pulling important data from various sources to be sent or read by other areas of the CTSI administrative team.
Reflection of Skills
A skill that I have improved this year is applying previous experiences and concepts from one situation to new situations. I do this almost every day on the unit by incorporating my previous work experience and knowledge gained from my nursing classes to my work on the unit. I have also found that I have started to apply skills I have learned on the unit to my nursing classes and skills from the administrative side to daily life and classes. A skills that I would like to grow on is asking for feedback from my supervisors, professors, or future employers. I have started to work on this skill at my internship site, but I will continue to do this after the internship is over by asking for feedback in my classes or other relevant situations.