Goals:
My first goal was to explore working in pediatrics and chronic pain as future specialty options as a psychiatrist. I have always been interested in psychiatry as a broad specialty, but I would like to explore the various subspecialties that exist and this internship site was a direct opportunity to do so. To achieve this goal, I was active in the recruitment process of studies involving pain patients, specifically sickle cell patients as this is the group our studies are currently focusing on, and pediatric patients. Through the recruitment process, I was able to meet the patients and learn more about their circumstances in a direct way. For the future, I am working to use my connections with my supervisor in order to work with more psychiatrists and gain unique insight from them.
My second goal was to network with professionals in the healthcare field. I wanted to accomplish this because networking with professionals will help me get more involved and learn more about the field of healthcare from people with valuable experience. This is a goal that I can always keep working towards. So far, I have achieved this goal by interacting with my supervisor, Dr. Williams, who is a healthcare professional herself, in a meaningful way that has allowed me to learn from her and her work. Furthermore, I attended meetings with Dr. Williams and other healthcare professionals regarding the ongoing projects. In the future, I can use the knowledge and connections gained through this internship to connect with other healthcare professionals.
My third goal was to learn more about the nonmedical sides of clinical research and the healthcare field, including record-keeping, administrative and organizational tasks, and reading and preparing research literature. This was a goal I wanted to accomplish because I could learn to navigate the sides of healthcare that I had not yet had exposure to in any of my courses. There were many opportunities for me to work toward this goal, including using the REDCap system, helping organize patient data collected in our research, and working with research articles in various capacities. I hope to expand on this skill by seeking out other opportunities to become well-versed in medical writing techniques.
My ultimate career goal is to attend medical school and become a doctor specializing in psychiatry. I chose this path as I've known from many years before that I have a deep fascination and interest in human behavior and the brain, as well as a passion for mental health and desire to help people suffering from psychological conditions. While I formed this goal pretty early on in my high school career, I've not had any cause to doubt that this is really what I want to do for a career so far. This internship was also able to confirm for me that not only do I have a passion for the human interaction side of a career in healthcare, but that I'm genuinely interested in the nitty-gritty of the technical side of the work that goes on away from the patient's bedside. However, I'm still very open to learning more and exploring as many options as possible. In the coming year, I plan on searching out many different shadowing opportunities as a way to explore other specialties. I will also be taking EMT training to get more first-hand experience in a patient care setting and not only learn patient care skills but also learn more about how the reality of patient care aligns with my expectations.
My goals for this internship never necessarily changed, but they expanded. Starting out with wanting to network and explore the healthcare field and psychiatry in particular, I've now mostly merged these goals and am looking into opportunities to do both at the same time by working with psychiatrists that I've come into contact with through this internship. I am attempting to proceed with this idea for my capstone so my summer and senior year will be spent working towards this goal.
Learning:
I'm very confident in my communication skills, as well as my ability to problem-solve and persevere when faced with setbacks. I've had to use my communication skills consistently throughout the course of this internship, whether when communicating with my supervisor on a weekly basis or reaching out to others for progress on various internship tasks. For example, just a while ago I had to send an email on behalf of Dr. Williams in order to obtain some forms from a research organization for a future study, and I had to utilize my professional writing skills. I worked with REDCap software to create a new database for the first time, whic was a learning curve I had to navigate using my ability to problem-solve. However, as I became more familiar with the software through trial and error, it became easier to navigate such setbacks and I've been able to notice growth in my ability to problem-solve. Throughout this learning curve, I also improved my ability to work independently as there were several things that I had to figure out that my supervisor herself didn't know.
I would like to grow more in the areas of teamwork and confronting challenges and failure in the future. I feel that due to the nature of my particular site I did not have much opportunity to be able to work with others in group tasks. While I enjoy independent work, I think it would be beneficial to engage in more opportunities to work together with my teammates on the same task. I will try to move forward with the goal of improving in this area by seeking out opportunities that focus on and foster teamwork. I would also like to take on more particularly challenging tasks. I feel that most tasks I took on throughout the internship were very well-suited for me but that I wasn't very challenged. I will try to seek out opportunities that are outside of my comfort zone and will offer a lot of opportunity for growth in areas I don't have much experience in.
A lot of what I've done as an intern has been based on skills that, while I had not previously used in my real life, I'd already been familiar with and acquired through my coursework. For example, the skills required for writing professional emails or article summaries are what I've learned through my writing courses and assignments. Even as I was working with the REDCap database I didn't feel like I was going in completely blind, considering I'd learned much about databases through my beginner's computer science course. What I've found very helpful and interesting about this internship has been the various opportunities to apply these skills in the real world, with real world results that don't only amount to grades. I think that this has been a great opportunity for growth in that this internship acts as a transition to the real world and its stakes in terms of how we apply the skills we've learned in our schooling.
This internship has helped me to put my coursework, specifically the coursework I've completed related to my major, Neuroscience, in context of the realities of how the content I've learned about truly applies and manifests in the real world. For example, while working on the pediatric sickle cell study, I've integrated knowledge from many of my courses: knowledge of what sickle cell disease is from my biology courses, knowledge of how chronic pain works and influences patients from my neuroscience courses, knowledge of how racial disparities manifest in the healthcare system from my sociology courses, and knowledge of how all of these factors feed into each other to create various psychological conflicts for individuals from my psychology courses. The direct experience of engaging with this study has had a great influence on my understanding of everything I'd previously only learned through books and lectures.