The study we are doing is asking doctors a "Surprise" question and seeing if it facilitates conversations with patients and their support persons, often family, about palliative, outpatient, or continued care. The surprise question is " Would you be surprised if this patient died in the next 12 months."  Doctors are asked this question about their current patients and these are followed up after time in order to see if their medical records indicate that their plan of care shifted after the question was prompted. Doctors of many sectors are included, though neurologists are the most common. 

Successes and Challenges

Workplace 

• My current strengths as a team member are initiative and work ethic. I know I have so much to learn from my supervisor and peers, but I definitely recognize that I am already learning a lot from my training and work with the team.  I want my team members to feel like they can trust me with more responsibilities as I learn more and gain more experience, so I am making sure to perform all of my tasks, small as they may be, to the best of my ability every day to earn that trust! These skills will be of the upmost importance in my career because medicine is ever-evolving. There will always be new information and skills to learn, master, and refine. Holding myself accountable to these standards ensures that my future patients receive the best care possible.

February 2024

• After a semester, my strengths as team member continue to include initiative and work ethic, but they now have expanded to include data collection as well. After working on several projects, I have been able to amass skills as to where to find information relating to patient demographics, medical history, and consultations with other medical professionals. This has enabled me to contribute to the team and gain satisfaction from adding to research projects. I have also had the opportunity to hear the discussions and opinions of medical professionals, which has allowed me to practice my communication in a professional medical setting. Working with such a diverse team has bee incredibly educating. During lab meetings, different members have shared insights into scenarios we encounter and made connections about their medical conditions, treatment options, and reasoning that I would have never considered, but that they have encountered numerous times over the years. This has taught me to recognize patterns in treatments and patient decision making. 

Successes and Challenges

I have felt successful at my internship by being able to contribute to discussions about the trends we saw as a team on the projects we have worked on! Some of the most challenging work at my internship has been interpreting medical records; there is so much more information than one expects and being able to pinpoint specific facts, especially dates, is pretty challenging! I our weekly meetings, however, we have been able to discuss strategies and trends that can usually lead to the information we need.  

• This year, I want to grow both in my technical skills associated with the internship and my professional skillset. My internship deals with medical records, on occasions clinical interviews with patients, and review of published research. These are all complex scenarios in which many skills can be developed and worked on, but I also hope to improve my problem solving skills within the team. My internship's team is made up of many interdisciplinary members who work together on many projects and can therefore have differences in how we communicate. Making sure to be as clear and respectful of others anytime I contribute to discussions is a skill I have begun to work on and apply during weekly meetings, and will continue to do so as the year progresses.

February 2024

• Looking back at the semester, one of the successes I am most grateful for is the ability to break down large tasks. Charting was incredibly difficult when I first began to work in this lab. I often overlooked or missed treatments and dates. Eventually, I began to divide the charts into the sections where they were expected to be found. My supervisor also taught us backup plans that became very useful when physicians and other professionals charted differently. After a few weeks, a chart that would have taken me four hours was now condensed to one, and I was able to contribute more work in my allotted hours. This is a skill that is monumental to anyone seeking to further their education. It can be incredibly overwhelming to think about the thousands of hours of studying and work that will be needed to get to medical school, but if I break them down into weekly or even daily hours, it becomes so much more manageable and less overwhelming.