The document summarizes the author's internship experiences at Greenville Children's Hospital. The author's goals were to understand clinical research and determine if it was a career fit. At the hospital, the author was able to directly participate in research, witness the research process, and receive mentorship. A highlight was creating an IBD booklet for patients, which required collaborating with nurses and using skills like health literacy. Overall, the internship reinforced the author's desire to enter medicine and also sparked an interest in pursuing clinical research or an MPH in the future.

1. MY REFLECTIONS ON MY INTERNSHIP
EXPERIENCES

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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.