Goals and Learning

Career Goals

I plan to apply to attend medical school after undergrad. Currently, I am interested in learning more about cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery. I am a cardiac patient, and I hope to contribute to research in the field and help other patients with cardiac conditions in the future.
I have a lot of education to complete before picking a specialty, but I am very sure of my decision to apply to medical school.
To discover if this goal fits my strengths and preferences, I will continue shadowing physicians and participating in research this year. I will also continue working in clinical areas to increase my exposure to patients.

Having reached the end of my internship, I have now confirmed I would like to pursue clinical research within my career as a physician. I have enjoyed working with patients, completing literature reviews, and working with a team to create effective study tools so we may learn about patients and how to best support them. I feel confident in using my self-knowledge and preferences to make career-decisions now, because I know I find clinical research intriguing, and I know I want to continue pursuing a medical education.

Over the past year, I have reached my goal of determining whether clinical reserach is something I aim to pursue in my career. I have built strong communication skills, and. I learned to work independently within a reserach team. To continue to pursue my goal to attend medical school and become involved in clinical research, I will keep my grades up and stay involved on campus. I plan to pursue another clinical research project this summer, and I will continue at my LHSI site through UROP next year.

Internship Goals

Goal 1: I would like to learn more about how myotonic dystrophy impacts the heart and how cardiac issues that may arise are handled. Additionally, I hope to explore the use of AI to detect EKG abnormalities early on or to predict potential complications.

How does this goal fit into your career journey or prepare you for the future? My career goal is to become a cardiologist. By exploring how a condition such as myotonic dystrophy impacts the heart and working with professionals familiar with myotonic dystrophy, I will learn more about the condition and better understand how providers make decisions related to it. As AI becomes more prevalent in medicine, I believe exposure to its usage in neurology and cardiology now will prepare me to continue utilizing it in the future.
What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?

Background Reading Assignments
Coordinate involvement of multiple subspecialists
Organize and synthesize the results of AI based project—AI readings

Progress: My biggest difficulty with achieving this specific goal was that the project was not able to be started this year. I did spend time learning how to read EKGs from textbooks, which I enjoyed. I completed literature review on myotonic dystrophy's cardiac implications, and the hope is this project will take place in the fall. This will allow me to further explore my goal of using AI to detect EKG abnormalities.

Goal 2: I aim to grow in my ability to interpret current research and its implications (research on myotonic dystrophy’s impact on the heart, for example).

How does this goal fit into your career journey or prepare you for the future? As I hope to become involved in cardiac research, it is important that I understand how to analyze current research and apply it to future projects quickly and effectively. Fulfilling this goal will help me do that.
What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?

IUSM evidence-based medicine library research page
Literature Review: Ovid or PubMed for Post surgical inflammatory neuropathy case report literature review: Meeting with Neurology librarian to learn effective literature review
Being able to analyze a myotonic dystrophy research paper and it’s cardiac implications before coordinating with a fellow on a project.

Progress: I made a lot of progress when it comes to learning how to interpret current research and its implications. I met with a librarian at IUSM to learn how to locate a variety of resources and how to break down every source. My next step to improving at this will be to maintain the skill by continuing to complete literature reviews and applying knowledge about biostatistics and how to interpret them.

Goal 3: I hope to become a better independent researcher by being trusted to and able to complete various tasks on my own, while also strengthening my communication skills with a research team for better coordination.

How does this goal fit into your career journey or prepare you for the future? In the future, I will need to successfully complete research tasks independently. Learning how to complete independent research tasks during my LHSI internship will help prepare me for this. In addition, I must know how to coordinate and work well with a team so research can progress. By working with team members throughout my internship, I will build upon these skills.
What tasks, responsibilities, projects, or activities will you do to meet this goal?

Coordinating meetings
Being able to fulfill deadlines
Completing work on literature reviews and manuscripts

Progress: I was trusted and able to complete various tasks on my own. I also strengthened communication skills by coordinating meetings and schedules with various team members. To continue improving my communication skills, I will focus on constantly keeping team members up-to-date and listening to them to understand, not just to hear.

Learning

I have already improved my teamwork skills. Recently, I have collaborated with another intern and a PhD candidate on creating a codebook. Coordinating with them on this project has helped me enhance those skills. I am also improving when it comes to constructively analyzing feedback and strengthening my work based on it. I have been able to successfully revist, reanalyze, and modify a topic based on feedback.
I would like to continue working on my ability to reanalyze my work based on feedback. To do so, I will continue to ask for feedback on projects I complete, and I will modify my work for further review.
This internship has helped me increase my understanding of what it means to be part of a scientific research team. As a biology major, I often complete lab projects with other students. I have further developed my ability to communicate and collaborate with others in science during this intership, and it has helped me work with other students in my major. Additionally, my internship has helped me understand how I can transfer analysis skills from completing clinical research to biological research I'll be completing for my major's capstone.
While I have continued to use all skills I sought to this year, I have grown the most in being able and trusted to completed independent research tasks. I know I have grown because I feel I have a better understanding of how to complete effective literature reviews and how to construct a REDCap survey. I have been entrusted to do both of these things individually.
As I did early this year, I still seek to improve my analysis of constructive critisim. While I always use it to make changes, sometimes I have difficulty viewing something from another person's perspective. I continue to try to do this to improve the unbiased analaysis I complete when receiving criticism.

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