In Fall 2019, I interned at Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI), assisting a psychiatrist (I’ll call them Dr. S) on their lung cancer screening study. As a psychiatrist specializing in smoking cessation, Dr. S is investigating access to lung cancer screening from both the patient and provider perspective (LCS). Initially, this research was intriguing to me as lung cancer is responsible for the largest percentage of cancer deaths, as it if often diagnosed at late stages (National Lung Cancer Screening Trial, 2011). As a research assistant in the early steps of the study, my job was twofold: contacting providers to enroll them in the study and updating the literature review. With supervision from the research coordinator, I also learned about informed consent, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process, and structured interviewing.

I connected with Elena, a recent Macalester psychology graduate, through the psychology department. She had contacted them looking for any students interested in an unpaid internship on a research study at HHRI. After a successful interview with Dr. S, my advisor and I decided that this would be a great opportunity to complete an internship for credit. We worked with the Macalester Internship department to register the internship as an upper-level psychology class.

Through interning at HHRI, I gained invaluable knowledge about how the research process works “in the real world.” The Psychology department at Macalester does a great job at simulating what a research study will be like from start to finish; however, until I started interning at HHRI, I did not fully understand exactly what goes into launching and carrying out a study. The most useful thing I learned was that the IRB process is not stagnant and therefore the study is in constant “review.” Every time there was a change to the study (e.g., a new person joined the team or an edit was made to a survey) we would need to get IRB approval. This really highlighted how much communication is needed not only within the research team but with the research institute as well.

In addition to the IRB process, I also became more familiar with informed consent. Specifically, as our study was working with a diverse population, I learned about getting informed consent from people who did not speak English, who were illiterate, or who had elementary-level educational experiences. Obtaining truly informed consent from these more vulnerable populations is extremely important for ethical reasons and to ensure the representativeness of the research. While I did not engage in informed consent or IRB revisions myself, learning about these skills through training and watching my supervisors engage in these tasks enhanced my understanding of psychology and public health research.