My first success in my internship came when I completed an effective literature reivew on a fairly rare condition called post-surgical inflammatory neuropathy. I met with a librarian at IUSM to build my understanding of research resources and scientific databases before pulling articles and evaluating them. Another success I am proud of is the time I spent writing an abstract for a case study. I sought the advice of my supervisor to strengthen it and formulate a final draft. As the year has progressed, my recent success has been in the form of successful patient surveys and data collection. I independently surveyed patients and successfully recorded all responses to be included upon future analysis. All of these successes will help me in my future academic and career goals. I have strengthened my literature review and writing capabilities, and I have begun to learn how to effectively approach patients and record information. These successes will help me build essential research skills for my hopeful future career as a cardiologist and researcher. 

One challenge has been coordinating schedules. To improve this situation, I have coordinated with my supervisor to create a class schedule that might coordinate with our research schedule better. Another challenge has been setting up and learning how to use some of our data entry and general research tools. I have been and will continue to utilize guides and ask my supervisor for help as needed when I work with these tools. 

A recent challenge arose some patients did not fit into the survey cohorts we created. The team discussed the issue and then created an additional cohort to address this challenge. This helped me understand the process a researcher would walk through during an issue in the middle of a project.