Internship

About the Internship

This internship works with Dr. Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds and explores researching health equity and obstetrics amongst different populations. Their work facilitates the cycle of health systems research and actually applying it to a system such as IU Health, essentially from "bench to bedside."

The mission of this internship site is to identify ways to ensure equitable levels of care and equal access to care for diverse patients and communities, especially regarding decision making for disadvantaged populations in terms of pre-term birth. As a result of this work, the hope is to facilitate the cycle of health systems research and actually apply it to a system such as IU Health, essentially from bench to bedside. Did you know that babies born between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy are not developed enough to survive outside the womb, so families must make the difficult decision about whether to pursue life-saving measures?

"Preterm Birth, Causes, Signs and Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment." YouTube, uploaded by Medical Centric, 20 February 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-WL_90a_A

PROJECT SUMMARY

My internship explores shared decision-making in women's health alongside health disparities amongst different populations, facilitating the cycle of health systems research and applying it to a system such as IU Health. Working as an intern in the Department of Pediatrics with IU School of Medicine, I have completed several projects including data analysis and interpretation as well as transcribing interviews which both focus around pregnancy. The data analysis focused on pre-test and post-test results, responses to animations about pre-term decision making in relation to knowledge scores, and demographics in relation to knowledge scores. My project that will be showcased works with the GOALS (getting optimal alignment for life support) Clinical Trial. My work includes writing data and transferring data from RedCap as well as cleaning and managing data through Excel. This is a vital role as it aids the research assistants in maintaining randomization. More specifically, I ensure that all data inputted on RedCap matches the patient's response in the audio recording. While doing so, I learn more about the patients’ varying pregnancy experiences, including the different choices each patient is more inclined to make regarding possible early delivery of their child.

FINAL PROJECT: Women’s Health Research: Data, Decisions, and Disparities

LHSI Showcase PPT

Workplace

I have communication skills. I have gained this skill through public speaking and working other jobs that deal with customer service. This will help me in internship work as I will have to write professional emails and work with a collaborative team. Another skill I have is problem solving and critical thinking skills. I gained this skill through doing schoolwork like chemistry and math problems as well as difficult application problems when it comes to biology. This will help me complete my internship goals because will allow to learn how data can be collected in different ways and how to store, clean, and manage data in secure data bases.

I have definitely been able to talk to my supervisor more and other members of the team more effectively. Anything that they have on their plate and need help with is something I complete first before working on my own personal project. I have gained more independent work throughout my internship. As I work on data monitoring, I am able to ensure that the data from the audio interviews actually aligns with data put into RedCap, meaning that research analysis and interpretation depends on the accuracy of how I am able to monitor the data. My efforts matter because they help to maintain randomization for the clinical trials.

Successes and Challenges

I felt successful as an intern when I was able to successfully make a data analysis report. I was able to be successful because I asked a lot of questions beforehand and used the most of my resources including a lot of communication. Another time I felt successful as an intern is when I was successfully able to transcribe the interviews and upload them into RedCap without any assistance. Now that it is second semester, I definitely feel more success in my role. I am able to naviage RedCap efficiently and even edit the interview questions myself as I work throguh my own project. If I find a mistake as I am listening to interviews, I have access in RedCap to make changes. What I learned from this is definitely independence. Independence is also something I will be learning as a future healthcare provider.

One thing that has been challenging in terms of the internship is time management. I feel like sometimes I get assignments done too early and sometimes I feel like I take too long. Something that can help me overcome these challenges is by communication with my team about taking on more challenging assignments. Something else that has been challenging this semester has been finding motivation. This is hard when I am virtual because I find myself distracted sometimes. I can definitely overcome this by setting aside any distractions at home. I need to stop doing work from my bed and actually sit somewhere else like an office or at a cafe. A challenge I had this year is definitely focusing in on one project. I was so used to dappling in many thigns that it took me some time to be patient and focus on one project. My new project that focuses on data cleaning definitely takes time. My internship team helped me by enforcing that I do not have to rush by any means.

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