Goal 1: Getting essential knowledge of working with patients in a clinical setting.
Shadow the physician visits. In these visits they will be performing neurological and physical examinations.
Shadowing the coordinators. They will be evaluating the patient enrollment into the study and I will get to experience how that works. Having seen some shadows there is a lot of things that I did not expect that went into the process of enrollment and accommodating to the participants that allow for a successful day of testing.
Shadow the consensus meetings. These include physicians from all different LEADS sites discussing patient cases for further diagnosis purposes. The consensus meetings that are performed are very beneficial for not only the other coordinators to know what is going on, but other sister studies to see how participants are doing in our study. Taking notes over these meetings has allowed me to fully understand and coherently put together all the information that I need for the showcase.
Goal 2: Understand how to navigate a professional work environment.
Conducting formal meetings and introductions throughout the office. These has been done a lot and it has really made me grow as an intern and a confident professional. I feel that presenting in front of others isn't as scary or nerve wracking as it was when I first started.
Learning to manage my time between school, personal life, and internship. This has been a struggle as I do find a correlation when deadlines for work come up, so does important exam dates. Something to follow up with that is that I challenge myself to make a schedule of what I am going to be doing with my time to prepare me for success.
Reading and learning about the system of the job. This would include the program Microsoft Teams, the study protocol, and learning new things from other interns/workers. Working these systems to me are now second nature. Knowing what occurs and the protocol of the study have been easily engrained and helped me immensely understand the data that is being shown.
Goal 3: Learn about the developments of EOAD (Early onset Alzheimer's Disease) and the contributions of LEADS.
Prep of the material for the participants in the study. This would include binder creation, lab prep, shadow scans, and having access to the electronic data bases.
Reading the protocol for LEADS. This would go into detailed explanation of what the LEADS program does for the study and the findings they are doing to gain knowledge of what causes EOAD. Looking up to my supervisors and communicating with coordinators daily I have been able to gain more information of what is going to reach discoveries and how to read information that would allow for readings of what may be occurring in participants scans to drive the progression of EOAD.
Shadowing visits of participants. Overall it will allow me to see the enrollment process, follow up visits, and what they do with the found research to study.
Throughout my life I have had been going back and forth with what I would like to do after my undergraduate degree. This year has shown me the passion that I do have for medicine and I plan to go to medical school following my graduation. The type of medicine that I have been looking the most into and feel would be my passion is cosmetic surgery. I have these goals to reach where I want to go because they are my passions and I will love to strive to do something in my life that is very fulfilling to me. I am very sure that I would love to go to medical school, but am not 100% on the career that I would like to take with that degree. I know being a physician is something that I would love to do but the specifics are not clear yet. Things that I am doing to find where my goals and strengths would fit, is putting myself into many different environments. Seeing how I thrive, adapt, and grow as a professional is a big sign of where I do belong. This has also helped me filter out the types of jobs that I would not enjoy. This internship has definitely helped me learn where I belong and the different routes that I can take as a physician, as not all have to be in a hospital setting.
Overall my career goals have changed through the work that I have been doing at my internship site. This has opened me up to a whole new category that I thought wasn't possible. It has now opened up in my mind to the possibility of specializing in neurology and becoming head of a research project that I am passionate about. Things that I have actively been doing and can continue to do is to research about different clinical trials and what went into creating them. With this information I can then intern at them and develop more of an understanding of joining/creating a research trial. Throughout the summer I then plan to look at shadowing opportunities with physicians at IU health and see how they found their speciality. Getting more information from the ones who went through it are going to be the most helpful for me. Starting the next semesters school year I plan to study at least one hour a day for the MCAT and hopefully fit in the course so that I can put myself in the best position to get into medical school.
For this upcoming summer my career goals are to continue doing research through my internship with the UROP funding that IUPUI offers. This has been an amazing opportunity for me that IUPUI has set up and has given me more resources to allow to continue. The reason I am loving and want to continue on with my internship is the new world of research I never knew that I would love as a career. Working closely with the coordinators and my supervisor Doris, neuroscience research is something that I am highly considering to do with my medical degree. It has shown me so much more to research than just being in a lab, or having to go down a clinical route of being in a hospital working with patients daily. Due to this I am feeling much more confident in a career path that I may take in the future. If you had asked me in the beginning of this internship if I would ever work in research I would have most definitiely said no, but after working and seeing how everything is run and works I am highly considering working in research as a PI.