My Internship

Learning and skills

From this internship, I learned more about how research and medical literature are implemented in processes that ultimately aim to improve the quality of patient care. I gained the confidence to sort through medical literature databases to find relevant pieces and develop conceptual connections from these findings. Additionally, I received feedback from my internship preceptor on various skills I displayed throughout the learning and exploration process. I gained an outside, professional perspective on where my strengths and areas of improvement lie. 

Regarding my development of skills, at this point in the internship, I am confident in my ability to clearly summarize goals, next steps, and discussion points after progress meetings with my team. Shortly after these meetings, I email a meeting recap to my team members to ensure we are on the same page about what is expected to be done until we meet again. Additionally, I realized early in my internship journey that this project will require a continuous intake of new ideas and subjects to ultimately take all that I've learned to gain perspectives from parents in a complex part of their lives. Therefore, in order to stay organized and perceptive, after progress meetings, I have been journaling to self-reflect on what topics/tools I am familiarized with, what concepts I feel need extra attention and effort to feel comfortable with, and what feasible next steps I can take. Looking over these writings allows me to track my progress and assess the extent to which I am meeting my learning goals. 

In regards to skills I would like to continue to work on, I want to become more comfortable with scientific writing and developing review papers. While I have recorded thoughts and connections I've found when reviewing medical literature, I sometimes come across roadblocks when trying to think through how these findings can connect to the writing of my project such as the structuring of survey questions. I understand the purpose and mission of Reach Out and Read survey projects, so I am comfortable writing the aims of my paper. I can sometimes experience "writer's block" when attempting to write other subsections revolving around the aims. 

To combat this, I talk through my thoughts with someone experienced with scientific writing such as Dr. Salih or the medical librarian. Being transparent with how I am not confident with my ability to write about the ideas and connections I've noticed allows those on my team to give me honest feedback on which areas of improvement I can focus on in specific regard to scientific writing. In the future, I can attend scientific writing workshops or seminars to learn from different professionals and gain new perspectives on the strengths and areas of improvement for my own scientific writing style.

Since the beginning of this semester, I have learned about scientific writing and the process of conducting research in a more extensive manner. I understand that the process of creating new contributions to the scientific research world means I have to have a thorough understanding of what is already known to be true. Therefore, I have learned how to take notes on what I think about my findings to assess my understanding of complex topics as I progress through exploration. Creating a scientific research project means solidifying a foundation of knowledge to build a discovery upon. It is critical that I understand how to manipulate the abstract concepts I am reading about to assess how they can be applied to my research project. Some of my favorite experiences with this internship have been writing about the process of making and building conceptual connections to see the progress I have made as I become more familiar with the world of scientific literature.

After submitting my mid-Spring self-evaluation, I realized that I have grown in my self-awareness of what my strengths are, where my areas of improvement are, and what realistic steps or resources I can pursue to bridge gaps. I have been my own advocate in reaching out to set up meetings with my supervisor and the medical librarian to get guided assistance on certain project areas that I find confusing to navigate. Additionally, I have maintained communication with my LHSI ambassador to continuously apply her feedback to my e-Portfolio and project. I am also proud of my writing skills for meeting summary emails specifically. I am confident in my ability to take notes during meetings, verbally recap the discussion points at the end of the meeting, and send out detailed meeting summary emails after meetings. I would like to grow in my manuscript writing abilities and feel that I am still learning about the different components of a manuscript and why they are important. To grow this skill, within the next month, I can continue researching survey study papers to make connections with how they are written and styled. 

After LHSI, with UROP support, I plan to continue working with my team on my Reach Out and Read project to ultimately publish a manuscript of my findings after the survey results are finished coming in. Outside of this project, I will serve IUPUI’s Ball Hall as a Social Justice Resident Assistant for the 2023-2024 academic year. In this position, I will contribute to building a safe space for residents to learn about various social issues and identities through events and conversations. Social justice is a personal passion of mine and I also feel that with this position, I will be encouraged to grow and learn about what it means to be a community contributor in a peer-serving-peer setting. I also plan on working as a Personal Care Attendant or Technician at an Indianapolis hospital to get more exposure in bedside settings and practice my nursing skill sets outside of my class schedule.

From working with and learning from teammates from different backgrounds, I have learned that working in the scientific research world can be an exciting, yet overwhelming process. I feel that my team definitely looks forward to the various directions the project can take to benefit patients in different manners but ultimately, we still progress forward one step at a time. Additionally, with my internship preceptor being a neonatologist, I have conducted an informational interview with her regarding her career as a physician and feel that I have more insights on how healthcare team members function and rely on one another based on their scope and responsibilities. 

I feel that my internship experience has been different than what I expected because very early into the internship, I realized, with the guidance and explanations of my internship preceptor, how the research I was exploring could be translated into palpable actions that can benefit patients and families' experiences in healthcare settings. Setting a strong understanding for why the work we are doing is important to bettering the community definitely motivated and pushed me to go above and beyond because our community members deserve the best care there is to offer. 

My attitudes and beliefs have been impacted by the people I am working with to show more patience and forgiveness to myself as I navigate through the healthcare research world as a second-year undergraduate student. My team members have not hesitated to walk me through programs that they are familiar with so that I feel more comfortable and competent. Overall, they have treated me with nothing but respect, kindness, and encouragement and for that, I am immensely grateful. I want to instill their positive traits into my own professional and personal endeavors because I feel that when one’s team sees and accepts him as a holistic, imperfect human being instead of a cog in the machine for project completion, the work feels more enjoyable and meaningful.

In early April, I reflected on my experiences with my team as my time with LHSI approached its end. My workplace culture consists of positivity, respect, openness, communication, and encouragement. My team members have accepted me with no hesitations in spite of exploring healthcare research in a university setting for the first time. When I have made mistakes or feel confused about certain parts of the project, my team members gracefully offer a helping hand and have never made me feel incompetent or incapable. I feel that my team members value serving the patient and I have been a part of conversations in which team members have advocated for the perspective of the patient when constructing our survey. Therefore, I feel that we are all moving towards the same goal of being able to contribute to conversations about how ROR can be used for literacy promotion and ultimately, making our community a better place. 

Reflections after my First LHSI Semester

After reflecting upon my first semester with LHSI during Fall 2022, I feel that I have learned how to better communicate duties and goals with my team members whether that’s over Zoom or through email. I have realized the importance of sending “meeting minutes” or summaries of discussion points or next steps after a team progress meeting. When meeting with my team over Zoom, I learned to ask questions or make comments that clarify our motives and ensure that we are all on the same page such as “Just to clarify, we are doing…” or “What else do you think we should delve into during today’s meeting?”. I realized that the use of intentional, open-ended questions during progress meetings is essential in utilizing time efficiently and allowing adequate time for all to share their insights. 

Successes and challenges

In terms of times I have felt successful as an intern, finding relevant literature with concepts or measures that can be applied to my own research project has felt rewarding for me because it means that my usage of medical literature databases worked in my favor. When I first started this internship, my understanding of how to use scholarly databases was at the high school level and was definitely not specified to scientific research. After meeting one-on-one with a medical librarian multiple times and playing with databases on my own time, I have become more comfortable with navigating databases in an efficient manner to find applicable information.

In regards to challenges, organizing and verbalizing my thoughts to my team members during project meetings to me can be somewhat difficult because of the multiple variables I am juggling when thinking about scientific research. While I know I am competent enough to have a voice in these meetings, sometimes, I am concerned that the ideas I am trying to express are not perceived in the way that I am hoping they are. Still, my team members are so supportive and I know that as I continue meeting with them, I will feel more comfortable with verbally explaining my findings without including too little or too many details. 

As of February 2023, I find that I have been successful in being my own learning advocate and seeking out resources I can use to bridge knowledge gaps. I feel that I have also been successful in showing myself patience and grace when I do make mistakes because I recognize how complex navigating modern research variables are. I have formed a supportive connection with an IUPUI research librarian and have met with her multiple times to navigate research databases and EndNote. I feel more competent in navigating medical databases and literature to find what is relevant to me and have noticed that these are skills that I am also using in my academic coursework when writing papers or working on clinical care plan assignments. I feel that I am also comfortable being honest about my knowledge gaps or voicing my questions during team meetings. After my first semester, I feel that I understand the foundation of what it means to be a contributor to healthcare research. I am ready to seek out more opportunities for myself within this project to be an evolving contributor who can educate herself and others about her work.

In regard to the challenges I've faced, my team members have shown me warmth and encouragement as I navigated finding my voice and sharing my opinions, even if they don't always come out as eloquent as I hope them to be. I feel that my team members value my voice and offer helping hands when I voice confusion. I think I am still learning how to voice my findings in professional research meetings without getting lost in irrelevant details, but I am thankful to my team for creating a safe space for me to learn and grow.

With my time with LHSI wrapping up in less than a month, I reflect upon my experiences and I believe my contributions directly impacted the larger project, goals, and mission of my internship team. For example, after building a strong foundation of knowledge on survey construction and Likert-scale questions through research exploration, I made a vast list of possible survey questions to ultimately send out to parents. With this list, my team and I talked through what we wanted to learn from the survey responses and together, we narrowed down ten questions to send out. Therefore, in this scenario, I think my ideas and perceptions directly impacted how the survey questions, which will reach parents, were chosen and phrased.