Internship
About the Internship
Our mission is to improve the health and well-being of every life entrusted to us and every community we serve. With a focus on the emergency room, we aim to innovate and improve critical aspects of urgent care. Fun fact, the Department of Emergency Medicine at IU School of Medicine has experience with both federally funded and industry-sponsored trials.
https://medicine.iu.edu/emergency-medicine/research/clinical
To better explain my internship site, I have provided the website describing our clinical research and our goals that guide our studies. We have multiple studies currently active in the emergency department, and it is important to note that the website listed above does not include all of them.
Workplace
Skills and strengths that I have and contribute to my site are communication, time management, and teamwork. Most of these skills came from doing group projects in classes, being a team member at Brighter Path, and learning from my own previous mistakes. These skills help me complete my internship work because having efficient communication will harbor a good relationship with those around me, therefore creating a good work environment. Also, time management and teamwork will help me be the most productive in the time I am there. These are also all skills I will be using every single day and can be used in every job I may have in the future.
​
The kind of team member I have been this year is dedicated and adaptable. Throughout my internship, my team role changed from supporting the research process behind the scenes to directly engaging with patients, screening, and enrolling them in studies. My contributions have impacted and helped work towards the goals and mission of my internship team by ensuring smooth patient enrollment, gathering vital data, and facilitating the integrity of the research process. Although the emergency department can be ever improving, we are getting there one step at a time. My efforts, even though they may be small and routine, mattered when it came to getting the bigger job done because they were essential to maintaining accurate study data and patient flow, directly contributing to the success of the studies and helping meet research objectives.
Successes and Challenges
A time I have felt successful as an intern so far is when got checked off to screen and enroll/approach patients independently in our research studies currently going on. Every day I was there, I tried to learn from those around me. I would attend approaches with them, and they would give me feedback. I took what I learned from my peers and translated it into my actions, leading to me getting checked off and allowed to enroll patients independently. Another time I have felt successful is when I was able to provide input from a nurse's perspective on a study we are doing. There were a lot of miscommunications going on between the nursing team and the research department. We could not get the study to run smoothly and not disrupt the nurse's workflow. Since I am in nursing school, I was able to provide some ideas of how we could work with the nurses as a team to conduct this study and not disrupt their workflow.
The most challenging part of this semester has been only working two days a week and balancing work, school, life, and this internship. Working two days a week (Monday and Wednesday) has been really challenging. In the beginning when I was learning everything, it was really hard to retain the information because when you leave on Wednesday you don’t come back until Monday and a lot of things have left your mind. You have to spend Monday morning refreshing your memory on everything before you can continue on learning. I sought the support of my peers/ supervisors, to help refresh my memory and their patience as it took me longer than most to learn all of the studies and complete the onboarding. Balancing work, school, life and this internship has also been challenging because I have a lot more on my plate than what I thought. Life tends to pop up in ways that are unexpected and unplanned. Going forward I need to remind myself that I can’t plan out my whole week entirely because I need to have some wiggle room incase life throws something my way. I will seek the support of my family, friends, and supervisors to combat anything that may pop up.