MY REFLECTIONS ON MY INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCES

MY GOALS AND OBJECTIVES FOR MY INTERNSHIP AND GREENVILLE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL AS A SETTING FOR THESE GOALS My goals for my internship were to broadly

acquire a better understanding of clinical research through hands-on experience and training and to determine if clinical research is a career path that I would want to pursue in the future

Greenville Children’s Hospital was honestly an ideal situation for me to achieve these goals. From working with current medical students to learning from physicians and current researchers, I felt as though I have a strong grasp on what it would take to pursue a career in research

HOW DID I ACHIEVE THE GOALS I SET? I feel as though the goals that I achieved were

a result of the combination of many different factors present at the Children’s Hospital, such as: Allowing me the ability to learn through direct

research work, Witnessing the multiple steps of how clinical

research trials progress, and Being advised and mentored by multiple

researchers from research nurses to primary investigator physicians.

MY IBD BOOKLET PROJECT: HOW DID IT GO? I am extremely proud of how the project

turned out. Originally I was concerned that, due to many other time draws such as shadowing with physicians or working in updating medical registries, I would not have enough time to work on the booklet. However, I was able to finish the booklet with help from 2 parents of children with IBD and the research nurses on staff

Knowing that a project I worked on as an undergraduate student will be used in a clinical setting is a very proud accomplishment for me.

MY IBD BOOKLET: SKILLS USED? I was counseled on this project by the

research nurses and clinical GI nurses as well as parents of currently diagnosed patients.

I used my acquired knowledge of the pathology and pathophysiology of IBD to better understand how and why the disease presents the way that it does and wrote the booklet to help a patient with IBD recognize for themselves when symptoms they may experience are due to their IBD

I used my knowledge of health literacy and my writing skills to create a booklet that could be read and understood by a patient.

MY IBD BOOKLET: STRENGTHS? Working with health professionals to create

the booklet that they have wanted to have for years but were unable to devote the time and effort to made me proud of the work that I had accomplished

I believe that this booklet is designed and written so that either a parent or a child would be able to utilize, at a base level, the tools found within to aid in their management of their IBD

MY IBD BOOKLET: WEAKNESSES? I wish that I had more time to understand

less clinically identifiable issues that the booklet could have helped (i.e. knowing what abdominal pain is ok and what requires clinical intervention)

Overall my work with parents of patients helped to limit this shortcoming and I very pleased with the resulting booklet

WHAT EXACTLY DID I CONTRIBUTE TO MY INTERNSHIP SITE? I was able to help Ransom Eke with clinical

research data that will be used in future health literature regarding EE

I helped Amy Hayes and Lisa Looper with maintaining records on their current research subjects, and

I created a booklet for new patient IBD diagnoses that will be used to aid in the treatment of this chronic disease

HOW HAS THIS INTERNSHIP REINFORCED OR CHANGED MY FUTURE GOALS This internship has reinforced my career goals, as

seeing how clinical medicine works from a deeper lens than can be seen from just shadowing has caused me to be even more impassioned about entering the medical field

However, this internship has caused me to think about changing my future educational goals. While I initially thought that I would not want to pursue a research-heavy type of medicine, my experiences with the clinical trial research was something that I enjoyed very much. I now am thinking about pursuing an MPH, Master’s in Epidemiology, or other research type graduate degree as a result of my internship experiences.

COULD I SEE MYSELF AS A PROFESSIONAL IN THIS FIELD? . I could definitely see myself in any of the

practices that I shadowed in Knowing that a clinician can still work on

research is something that I did not know and has caused me to want to pursue being a clinical physician even more

RELEVANT COURSEWORK THAT HELPED DURING THE INTERNSHIP? There were a number of classes that gave me skills that I utilized

during my internship, such as: Research Methods and Designs by Dr. Truong: taught be how to gain the

skills necessary to understand the clinical research trials and be able to use tools such as Excel to format and analyze the statistics gained from the studies.

Public Health Communication by Professor Deb Charles: taught me how to apply communication skills to those of average to low health literacy when creating the IBD booklet

Health Care Delivery Systems by Professor Welsh: gave me an understanding of how health care systems (like GHS) operate and how to understand the reasoning behind business decisions made by the hospital (i.e. limiting research time in order to see more patients in clinic that are paying)

Body Responses to Health Behaviors by Professor Graves: the use of case studies in the class as well as an in-depth look at diabetes prepared me well for my work in the Pediatric Endocrinology clinic.

Microbiology by Dr. Rudolph: The skills that I acquired in the microbiology lab was very helpful to me when working with blood samples in the research lab.

DID THE HEALTH LITERACY TRAINING FROM LAST SEMESTER HELP? Yes, writing the IBD booklet was a real-world

example of using the health literacy training that I received.

I wrote a booklet for parents (and even patients) for newly diagnosed IBD, and I made sure that the booklet was written in a way that a patient of average health literacy in SC (which is around a 5th grade reading level) would be able to understand.

Using these health literacy skills was vital in making sure that my booklet would be a useful tool for the dozens of newly diagnosed patients and their families seen at the GHS clinic.