Internship

About the Internship

The Interprofessional Education Center (IPEC) provides team based collaborative care for patients of all backgrounds in specialized clinics. They also work to provide interprofessional education through different events and programs to spread awareness and help others learn about prevailing issues in the health community.

The motive of the IPEC is to help students and professionals to work on developing interprofessional relationships and collaborative healthcare through events, clinic work and more. One of these interprofessional clinics is the Comprehensive Pain Assessment Clinic (CoPAC), which focuses on providing patient care in a team based setting and treating patients with chronic pain. This work matters since not just are the teams and care providers providing care to the patients, but they are also working on a larger mission of limiting the chances of their patients developing an opioid disorder through their medications for pain. A fun fact is that the pain clinic also sometimes has dental students who come in to expand their experiences, and it is interesting to see how their expertise can make a difference in the care for the patients in this field of health.

For more information on CoPAC visit: https://ipe.iu.edu/practice/copac

--> On the right is an infographic with more information about CoPAC!

Source: Canva

Project Summary

Through interning at the team-based Comprehensive Pain Assessment Clinic, I was able to come up with a project based on creating resources for the clinic, specifically for those in need of housing due to reasons perhaps centering around substance use. I created a portfolio of information sheets including resources for different Sober Living and Recovery Transition Homes. Additionally, I compiled a comprehensive table of these resources to create a more general and convenient option as well. The general table and the in-depth information sheets specifically act as a helpful resource for individuals after incarceration, being homeless, losing their living quarters, and more. This list and the documents will be utilized by patients and individuals in the team specialty clinics, as well as throughout the IU Health - Central Indianapolis primary care clinics as a resource for practitioners to provide to their patients.

View Project!

~ Workplace Skills~

SKILLS:

Being a good team member--> I have been able to develop and hone this skill in classes where I have had to work on a group project to understand everyone's views and add on to their ideas in a respectful way to create the best outcomes. Similarly, having the skill of being a good team member in CoPAC will allow me to be able to collaborate with the other members in a professional, respectful and efficient manner while learning more about the team to add to my skills and use this improved strength in my future as an optometrist or dentist.

Being a Hard Worker--> This is a skill that I was really able to work on when I moved from Canada to America my senior year of high school. I had to work hard to complete the requirements to get an honors diploma, which meant taking difficult classes, and I also had to adapt to a new setting. However, I was able to to keep pushing forward and put the effort in to adapt and succeed my senior year in a brand new country. I can use this skill of being a hard worker at my internship site by working to meet deadlines and prove my commitment so that I can be trusted with bigger projects and responsibilities, which will help add to my skills as well so I can become an efficient worker in the future when pursuing my health career.

Providing Care--> Throughout high school I volunteered at the local library where I read and played board games with children to improve their reading comprehension skills while having fun. This experience taught me a lot about how to balance providing help but also being caring and comforting while working with others, especially children. I learned how to prioritize making the children I worked with feel safe as possible so that they knew they were in a judgment free zone where they could speak freely and make mistakes. I can transfer this skill to the clinic setting by making sure I keep that same mindset of care when speaking and working with patients or the team. The site very much emphasizes being a judgment free zone and that is something I am familiar with and can work to support while learning how I can implement this skill in my future career.

~ Team Member ~

--> At the beginning of the internship, I was a team member who was very shy and just focused on taking in everything around me. However, throughout my internship I have been able to become more involved by shadowing and observing discussions related to the clinic process of creating a shared care plan for patients. I have then been able to use that knowledge and the issues that were mentioned in the discussions to come up with a project about the resources which are needed for patients. For example, one of the main goals of the Comprehensive Pain Assessment Clinic is to provide a care plan to tackle the chronic pain needs of patients of many different backgrounds, which also includes many who struggle with addiction and other significant issues. My contribution of compiling information sheets full of resources for sober living and recovery homes will aid the mission of my internship team since the information sheets will be a resource for our patients that need that extra support, and CoPAC focuses on cultivating an environment where patients are respected and supported. My efforts of researching, compiling and organizing these information sheets mattered in order to get a bigger job done, which is seen by how now some patients will be able to get immediate resources and aid for specifically recovery housing, and that will allow them more time to focus on their care plan for their chronic pain. From here on out, I hope that I can continue to work with my supervisor and the other members of the team to perhaps compile even more resource sheets for the clinic based on other areas of concern for our patients.

~ Successes ~

So far, a time that I was able to be successful at my internship was when I was able to work on the information sheets I'm making for clinic resources. While having discussions with my supervisor, we came to the conclusion that it would be useful to have an information packet for sober living and recovery homes since those resources would be very helpful for some patients we see in the pain clinic. Even though I had never done any creative work on this large of a scale, I was able to work out a game plan with my supervisor about where to begin my research, and I was able to take control of the project from there on out. Throughout the process, I was able to fall back on my team for any questions I had about potential sources, which allowed me to produce the best compilation of sources possible to design the information sheets in a creative way on my own while also getting feedback from others in my team. Being able to work on an individual project like this helped raise my confidence about my ability to work on my own while having a great team to ask for feedback! Along with that, building the skills of researching and displaying my work in a creative way are definitely skills that will come in use in the future whenever I may have to work on posters or projects in future workplaces or classes. Doing this all gave me a great sense of accomplishment and made me proud of my work!

2. Another time I have felt success at my internship site was when I was able to sit in on a patient visit and observe how care providers converse and work to aid patients. The reason I consider this a success is because this was my first time ever shadowing a patient visit, and I was able to listen to their stories and empathize while learning the ways in which a health professional can work to relieve that pain a patient may feel or help find a potential solution in some way. This opportunity allowed me to step out of my comfort zone by meeting new people in a comfortable environment since I had people from my team around me to act as mentors for the type of discussions and care I may provide in the future as a health care provider. With the goal of becoming an optometrist in the future I will definitely have to lead or play a vital role in patient interactions, and so even seeing how different professions converse and treat patients educates me with useful knowledge for the future.

3. One of the challenges I faced in the fall was being more confident to speak up in team huddles, which is something I have seen myself improve on throughout the internship experience. For example, I had the recent success of getting to lead our team debrief, which allowed me to speak up and take charge of closing out our discussion in a team of professionals and learners. I was able to do something nerve-wracking while having the support of my supervisor and I succeeded in prompting and recording my team's thoughts about the things that went well and needed to be improved in clinic. This success of mine definitely taught me how to speak with confidence in front of a group of people and it made me less scared of making mistakes when speaking. This experience will aid me in the future since, for example, applying for jobs or professional school will require me, in some cases, to take part in an interview, and having this confidence when speaking in front of a group of people will help in allowing me to have some form of control over a discussion and provide me with experience of guiding a conversation.

~ Challenges ~

One of the most challenging parts of this semester have been time management. Having so many exams, reports and assignments make things overwhelming especially if an exam lands on the day of my internship. Specifically, during the beginning of the new semester and finals week things can tend to become overwhelming, especially when there are extra responsibilities outside of school. However, to tackle this situation my supervisor has been great and we have come up with work I can do on my own time to make-up for the time I can't come to the clinic due to exams or other overwhelming tasks. Some of this work which I can do outside of clinic includes reading up on literature, doing training courses, working on information sheets and more. Having the support and understanding of my supervisor has allowed me to feel more at ease with balancing my schoolwork and internship site, and I'm hoping that aspect of time management will get easier through the spring semester as I've spent longer at this site.

2. Another challenge I've faced is being confident enough to speak up more in team huddles since it can be a bit intimidating to be an undergraduate in a team of care providers and others with a lot of experience. To deal with this challenge I will work to speak up a bit more and to keep putting myself out there even if I make mistakes. With the clinic representing a psychological safe space, I know its okay for me to make mistakes and that is something I will keep in mind and make a goal weekly to speak up more each time in clinic.

3. After a full semester at my internship, I have now mostly adapted to the challenges I had in the fall for the most part. However, a new challenge that I recently faced was being able to handle some of the responsibilities of the clinic coordinator on the day that she was away. This meant that I had to fill in some of the duties of her role which included collecting patient scores, knocking on pateint doors, and running the end of clinic debrief. Handling all of these responsibilities on the same day seemed overwhelming at first since this was my first time doing any of these tasks, which made me a bit nervous about making mistakes. However, my supervisor and the rest of the team was very understanding and they were there to answer any questions I had. Overcoming this challenge of taking on new responsibilities helped me figure out how to be prepared and step in when the team needs me to. This challenge also taught me the important skills of multitasking and taking on responsibilities, which are skills I can apply in future workplaces or class.

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