Internship

During my undergraduate studies, I had the opportunity to work as an intern at a smaller hospital near the university. After searching for some sort of internship for a year, I realized I needed to be willing to volunteer. I got a lead from a friend and showed up at the CEOs office asking to speak to him. After discussing my career goals, he said he would be in contact with me. Two days later, his secretary called and asked me to come in. I met with the CEO and the Associate Administrator (who would quickly become my immediate mentor).

Within two weeks I was working on projects. My first project was to research all the aspects of implementing a formal internship program. I talked with career services at the major universities, discussed potential projects with hospital directors, and was able to understand the HR interface. Through all of this I was able to learn the roles of the various departments. I was able to present my findings to the CEO of our hospital, as well as, the CEO of another hospital in the system. To this day there are now around 5 interns between the two hospitals.

One of the more difficult projects I worked on was figuring out how to help patients have a better perspective of ancillary services. When a patient comes into the ED, they will often have a lab test ordered, and the nurse will say, "we are just waiting on the lab for results." In the patient's mind, they are thinking, "I have to wait, this must be a really slow lab." If the nurse probably educated the patient by saying, "This lab test typically takes half an hour to process. Our lab is very good about having tests done promptly," then the patient knows what to expect and is pleased with the process. I worked on coming up with scripts for nurses to talk to patients in similar situations.

My internship was able to give me the introductory experience to understand what a hospital is and what certain members of the staff do. It has served as an enhancement to my education.