My Internship

Project Summary

Healthcare worker wellness includes a balance of psychological, social, and physical aspects of an individual’s life. The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the relevant challenges highlighted in my literature review. My personal experiences shadowing family medicine residents in the IU Health Physicians Family Medicine clinic downtown allowed me to observe the stresses and challenges healthcare workers face on a day-to-day basis. Physician wellness and well-being are an integral part of high-quality health care, thus needing to prevent burnout, emotional exhaustion, and mental health issues for healthcare workers. High-quality health care aligns with the four pillars of the Quadruple Aim: reducing cost, patient satisfaction, improved health, and provider satisfaction. Considering this, a more concrete definition of wellness and well-being is needed to inform initiatives and support for those working in medical settings.

Learning and Skills

Some of the skills I bring to my site is my flexibility, organization, communication, and my eagerness to learn. I believe that my desire to learn will allow me to gain the most out of my internship. I will be able to apply previous knowledge from classes and technology to the research and learn new skills related to my site. 

I am most excited to have the opportunity to shadow doctors and residents in clinics. This will give me an idea for what a work day for residents will look like. I will be able to look at and hear patient-doctor conversations to try and test myself to remember tests, pains, and complaints to different diseases or health topics. This experience will be valuable to get a measure of how applicable my first three semesters at IUPUI have been. I

The main thing I wish to gain from my internship is what future plans would be the best fit for me. I am currently weighing two options: medical school to pursue psychiatry or a PhD program in neural engineering. This internship with Dr. Delbridge will provide me with the resources to shadow and work with doctors, residents, and medical students so that I am able to weigh my likes and dislikes of clinical patient care. So far, I have had the opportunity to shadow 5 second and third year residents at the IU Family Medicine Clinic on IUPUI. 

Some of the skills I have used during the internship site as of now include:

• communication

• integration/application

• independence 

• constructive criticism/feedback

• attendance/punctuality

I have biweekly meetings with my supervisor, Dr. Delbridge where we discuss my progress and any questions I may have. We often go over what I have learned, what I want to work on for the next two weeks, and what questions I may have over the work I have done or in general about family medicine. I often work on tasks independently, much of which included researching and reading papers, journal articles, and medical sites. I have also learned how to use two new programs: REDCap and DoodlePoll. REDCap is a program used to manage databases and surveys and DoodlePoll is a program that allows group schedules to be created. I have read 10+ documents that regard mental health, family medicine, or the ethics of the research, thus accumulating more background knowledge of the research. So far I have used a little bit of my prior knowledge of mental health to have a deeper understanding of the documents. 

I would like to continue to work on integrating and applying my previous skills and knowledge. The readings and shadowing have allowed me to apply some previous knowledge from my classes but would like to be able to use this skill more. My classes next semester may refresh my memory on some common diseases and health issues so if I am able to shadow doctors again, I may be able to understand more of their conversation. 

The Workplace

So far in the internship I have worked with my supervisor and a few medical school residents. The internship site has been friendly, passionate, and respectful regardless of status or experience. As I worked with the residents to shadow them in clinics, I learned about residency and what inspired them to become physicians in family medicine. I aspire to integrate the professionalism and passion that these researchers and healthcare workers display into my future occupation.  

When thinking about my ideal workplace culture, I realized that my internship site had everything I want. The internship is comprised of passionate and respectful healthcare professionals working on a team. The community, diversity, and each individual's love for their work and helping people made the clinic downtown an ideal workplace for me. 

Where I want to grow as a professional/teammate:

• Communication - I want to provide information quickly and accurately so that I am able to become a better teammate

• Receiving feedback - while I haven't had many opportunities to experience this so far, I want to work on not getting down on myself when I receive feedback because it is information that allows me to produce better quality work 

• Become more knowledgeable - there is so much that I can still learn about the fields that I am interested in. I want to become an expert in the field that I will work in. 

These experiences and interactions with the people I work with have allowed me to grow as a student and a teammate. I have learned so much about the medical field, how to conduct general health screenings, and working under pressure, among many others. I am looking forward to how I continue to grow during the rest of my time at IUPUI and any future internship or research positions I take. 

I expected my internship to be busy and stressful because I will be working with healthcare professionals. However, my team is supportive and shows interest in my academics and extracurricular activities. I was mostly doing readings and looking at databases, but with the shadowing experience, I was able to converse with some patients and doctors. The shadowing experience has been engaging and informative, allowing me to learn and integrate professional behaviors in a clinical setting. 

Successes and Challenges

The beginning of my internship consisted of completing the CITI training program, and learning REDCap and DoodlePoll. Opening REDCap, a program that I have never heard of before for the first time felt overwhelming and stressful. By following along with Dr. Delbridge and watching the tutorial videos, I was able to familiarize myself with the basic functions of the new program. I now use REDCap almost daily to work on my showcase presentation. I have created my own form to effectively conduct my bibliography. 

One of my other successes was being able to shadow the medical student residents at the family medicine clinic. While the doctor and patient were speaking of their problems, on occasion, I could identify their problem based on the stated symptoms. I could also accurately understand the vitals chart with heart rate values, a mental health checklist, and blood pressure values. My other success was being able to use REDCap in order to create my internship project. I created my own project and data input boxes to create a bibliography for the wellness and well-being readings I analyzed throughout the year. 

My biggest challenge is to fulfill the academic expectations that I have for myself. My STEM-heavy classes can be quite stressful, and I occasionally felt burnt out. When feeling overwhelmed I try and speak to my supervisor and allow myself to take a one-day break from the internship to focus on my academics or myself. Winter and spring break have been a great time to catch up and review readings from the beginning of the internship so that I am well-prepared for the tasks that will come with the showcase in April.