I think the experience I've gained throughout my internship has made me reconsider the path to that will ultimately lead me to my career. Before starting the internship, I had very minimal knowledge of what it truly meant to be a modern midwife working with a practice of healthcare providers.It made me also realize how many open possibilities there are when it comes to the medical field. Above all I loved seeing this side of the healthcare world, especially how it connected to my original plan to become a labor and delivery nurse. I think that looking ahead, I still want to obtain my BSN through a four year nursing program, however I now know that I want to pursue midwifery after I gain hospital experience as a L&D nurse. I think that having these building blocks of a career will help guide me on my path to a satisfying career in my future. Ever since I was little I've always said I wanted to help people when I grow up, and as I get older I think my calling lies in the care of other women. It was amazing to be surrounded by a practice almost entirely made up of women and to see the strength of all the mothers in and out of the delivery room. I think above all I've learned that there is so my heart that goes into providing care, whether that be comforting a patient, sending out a card to a postpartum mother, or being a person they can talk to.
Academically I've prepared myself in terms of clubs and honors courses and college courses over the summer, but I think most importantly I've prepared myself to be patient, to be calm under pressure, to be kind, and be passionate towards whatever I set my mind to. I can't wait to see what lies ahead as my high school career comes to an end and I being a new journey into the medial field.
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For my internship project which took place over the course of my time at North County Health Services as well as Tri city medical center, I got to carry out a project the midwives and providers had been wanting. I took the opportunity to craft a survey I created which centered around how OB patients use the internet during their pregnancy. Since many mothers have come to the midwives and doctors with concerns they found on unreliable maternity help websites, I will be sharing my data with the group in hope of sorting out which sites are reliable and carry correct information that patients can look to for answers when they're not in their appointment. After I sorted out all the data I will create a short list of useful websites that are given the okay by all the providers that will be used throughout the clinics as a recommended list of websites that have correct information by the end of the week. I loved how the project connected patient interaction with reliable research and data. This project was important to me because I saw the potential it had to be meaningful for the staff even after my internship was over. It was a chance to learn more about healthcare directly from the patients and have a better understanding of what medical providers have to work around with more and more internet users in todays world. The actual process was going into the exam rooms with the midwives and asking a series of questions to each patient, whose answers varied in some areas but were pretty uniform in others. Here are my questions: 1) have you ever used the internet to answer pregnancy questions or find pregnancy related information? 2) How often would you say you've looked up questions? 3) What questions or information did you search for? 4) Did you use Google or a specific website to find this information? 5) On a scale of 1-3, 4-6, or 6+, how many online sources have you looked at? (includes number of google searches) 6) What language did you use? 7) How far along were you in your pregnancy when you looked up these questions? Next, I had to sort out all the data from the 30+ mothers and color code the certain aspects I wanted to focus on. Next was looking into the actual sites the patients were using and figuring out what made a reputable, accurate site. I then worked with the providers to figure out what sites were already being recommended as well as the sites they used themselves. Then the list was refined and revised to create a list that was accessible to the patients as well as educational and beneficial to their pregnancy. My data and final products are here below: Final Products:
Hover over the pictures for details or click through the gallery: I believe that my work as an intern meaningful to my education because when it comes to the medical field, these are the skills that are going to guide me on my path to nursing and eventually midwifery. I think that my work in my research project has shown me the different aspects to interacting with the patients in the clinics as well as the importance of making sure the patient is also educated about their care plans and knows the reasoning behind the care they are being given. in clinic especially a lot of the talks revolve around understanding and making sure the health provider and patient are on the same page. I think that my work is significant or meaningful to the world and not just school
is because gathering the data around mothers and pregnancy goes far beyond my own self, and branches out possibilities to the clinic and hospitals. What I mean by this is that by being able to contribute to a project the clinics have been needing, once women start having the cards with the websites handed to them, then a whole web of recommending said sites to friends and families begins. My biggest hope with this project is that women share these sites with other women and a certain butterfly effect begins: Change some of the sites they look at to more qualified ones and soon pregnant women will know which trusted sites have accurate information. I think the reason this project goes beyond school is because it will be implemented in the real world, even when I'm no longer interning for my mentor. The qualities and characteristics I saw in the people around me that made me want to develop even further was the love for education I saw all around me everyday. It seemed as though the levels of education one could reach were endless, and I adored how passionate the people around me where about constantly absorbing new topics and bettering their scope of the medical field. It was really inspiring to see so many people who had gone through so many years of school to achieve what they wanted to do in their lives. I think my view of life beyond high school changed during my time as an intern simply because I never realized that after college, you still have so much life to live. All the midwives would talk about their own paths in life and it was really special to hear about all the things they had done and were still continuing to do. I think before my internship I tried to put life into little boxes one checks off, high school? Check. College major? Check. Four year program? Check. However, I realized that many times life has other plans. I think I found that when you truly find something so fascinating and something that makes you happy in life, the path it took to get there often isn't a straight one. I think it made me realize that after high school, I have so many different directions and places life could take me, and that life doesn't have to be one step from square A to B every time. There can be side roads and short cuts and scenic routes along the way, and that is perfectly okay. It made me more excited to embark on my own journey after high school and take advantage of all the life I have to live (if that makes any sense). Here are come photos from my internship so far:
Self advocacy: the ability to speak up for yourself when you need support, when you're confused about something, or when you're uncomfortable with a situation.
I think that throughout my internship so far, I have advocated for myself on a day to day basis. Going into the case conferences every week, there is tons of medicals terms and lingo that are foreign to me, and I took it upon myself to speak up and ask as many questions I could during or at the end of the conference, which in turn has helped me understand hospital protocols and charting abbreviations when the midwives log for their patients. Self advocacy is seen all throughout the office since people are always trying to better understand the specifics of medical issues in order to provide the most accurate, up to date, form of care. Support is a big part of the clinic and hospital's community, and it's been super easy to ask for clarification and support when it comes to the medical side of the internship as well as my project. As far as the advice in "How to be an intern everyone remembers" goes, I have taken to heart when it said to ALWAYS have a notebook with you. Every day in the clinic and especially when my mentor and I look into specific medical topics I want to learn more about, I fill up multiple pages in no time. I think it's super important to be punctual, so if my shift begins at seven in the morning, I'm parking at six-forty. I also have been dressing severely professional even though the actual clinic dress code tends to be laid back depending on the individual. I'm not complaining in the dress code department though, since I really enjoy getting dressed for work every morning. I always try to keep myself busy, even if that means revising my own notes or organizing the project data on my lunch break. I figure, I'm here to be an intern, and so I'm not going to be a disappointing one. I hold such a pure admiration for the entire healthcare staff and respect them and their work to the fullest. I think that also translates into the work I put out, and I can't wait to keep doing my very best in these upcoming weeks. For my internship project, I am taking the opportunity to take on a project the hospital and clinic have been needing for awhile. In the upcoming week, I will be carrying out a survey I create which centers around how OB patients use the internet during their pregnancy. Since many mothers have come to the midwives and doctors with concerns they found on unreliable maternity help websites, I will be sharing my data with the group in hope of sorting out which sites are reliable and carry correct information that patients can look to for answers when they're not in their appointment. After I sort out all the data I will create a short list of useful websites that are given the okay by all the providers that will be used throughout the clinics as a recommended list of websites that have correct information. I was really excited when my mentor and I finalized the details of the project since it combined one on one interaction with the actual patients in the clinics and labor and delivery as well as research that I could graph or dive into. I looked at research data that was done at other hospitals who also collected data around social media and pregnancy and used their findings as a baseline for what could come out of my own data. I think that because the project has two phases (one being the actual surveys in the clinics and the other the research), the skills needed for it to be a quality project are so vast. When talking to the patients, it's important to remain patience since some mother's only speak Spanish and require an interpreter to communicate with (although taking Spanish second semester has really helped). Another skill has been staying extremely focused when digging through all the research reports that have been done and knowing the specific information that will be beneficial to the clinic. The team of healthcare providers have shown so much support already, with midwives sharing their own favorite websites and even helping me find the best research documentation through their own connections. I'm really excited because this is something the midwives have expressed that they needed and so to help them in any way is very rewarding while also exploring my own interests in collecting and sorting data. Today was the first day of collecting said data and the results are already super strong. I can sense that both age and the split between regular OB and diabetic patients are going to be key factors when separating and interpreting the women's answers. I can't wait to show the providers what I found so far tomorrow at our case conference.
Since I career shadowed my mentor last year for my tenth grade career day, I already had a sense of her path to midwifery as well as the clinics itself. A midwives main responsibilities and duties revolve around assisting and guiding women through the stages of their pregnancy as well as labor and postpartum. They work closely with MD's and other midwives on a sort of team to provide care plans. Their responsibilities go hand in hand with their duties in the sense that they are guiding a safe pregnancy for their patients and ensuring that they are being treated appropriately based on their medical and physiological needs. When I asked my mentor about her line of work with 30+ years under her belt, she said that by specializing in diabetic patients, it allows you to gain more and more insight into the job itself. Any person in the medical field will tell you it's hard work and an amazingly rewarding job, and you can tell they truly mean that. The organization- North County Health Services, was founded in 1971 to serve mostly rural areas such as Ramona and San Marcos in North San Diego County. There mission was to provide the much-needed health services in these areas since physicians in these communities were not willing to treat low-income patients. Currently, NCHS is still pushing for medical services to be available to anyone no matter their financial and medical insurance status. A typical day for the midwives (and interns) consists of going over the patients record before they are seen, checking their "sweet success diet" book, which helps track their food intake as well as blood pressure. Next the patient is seen and is either given an ultrasound, postpartum checkup, routine appointment, or whatever called them into the clinic. Today, for example, mothers from all different backgrounds were seen to either get the baby's heartbeat, talk steps for postpartum and delivery, go over diet plans, and so on. If there's any advice for working in any clinic in California it would probably be that being bilingual is a big benefit since we have many Spanish speakers and the clinics holds a big part in providing care to everyone. It's definitely important to get along with everyone in your healthcare team simply because if two providers bump heads when it comes to patients, that can directly affect the level of care being provided. From what I've seen everyone at NCHS gets along great and are driven to provide the best care they can.
Looking at my time so far, some questions I still have are what my twelve hour shift will be like, since I'm at hospital for the first time tomorrow. I'm not worried but rather excited, and fingers crossed that I'll be able to see a birth. Some connections I've made between midwifery and HTH have been the amount of teamwork that goes into the healthcare field and the amount of social/ project building skills that translate into providing care. I can't go into too much detail about anything worth mentioning due to HIPPA regulations, but I've gotten to feel a babies head when it dropped into the pelvis and I have also gotten to see some unique cases over the week. I think a big skill that is oriented with patient contact is all health education, and a lot of it goes into explaining different care options as well as the medicines or saline units to a patient so they know exactly what they are receiving and know for themselves how they are being cared for. Commuting to and from my internship for me consists of waking up and driving myself. it's sort of funny how all of a sudden I feel so "grown up" meal prepping my lunches every night, showing my work badge to the receptionist when I come in, keeping track of all my notes, eating my overnight oats on the way out the door, even stopping by the grocery store and picking up stuff for dinner on my way home- yeah, I made my family homemade zucchini tater tots and a lemon tart one night. It truly is a glimpse into the real working world and I'm so thankful that I even get the opportunity to experience it all. Even though I got to sit in on a case conference the week before, my official first day was still fascinating and interesting. my first impressions of the job was the amount of teamwork and collaboration that goes into providing health care at their weekly case meetings where they review high risk patients. The midwifes, doctors, and nurses all work together to make one health plan for each patient and rely on each other's expertise in the field to guide the conversation and plan of action.It made me realize that our group work at HTH is meaningful and is a skill that is applicable to all professions. Another thing that struck me was how my colleagues have a balance between delivering healthcare yet still make each patient feel like they are special when being treated. What I mean by this is that as far as the actual care goes, they combine emotional and logistical help, or as HTH would like to call it: "logos" and "pathos". My colleagues are amazing and always more than willing to help me grasp concepts I don't understand or review medical vocabulary words I jot down at the end of each conference. Today for example, I got to learn the basics of shoulder dystocia, which is when the infant becomes stuck inside the mother with its head already emerged during labor.The reason this was which was presented today as a presentation was as a refresher for the group since they work with lots of diabetic patients (which is a risk factor). Something that struck me about the job itself as how diverse each pregnancy truly was. whether that be high risk diabetic patient or unique case-by-case patient. The medical field is never boring in the sense that you have a routine to the care you provide yet it is never quiet the same. Im excited to keep absorbing medical terms and be on my toes for the remainder of my internship. If I had to say one thing that worries me about the internship, it is the patients themselves. Just listening to the high risk patient's files presented at the case conference, you develop a sense of empathy and concern but also optimism since you know they are going to receive the care they need. I am a very sentimental person and so I draw deep empathy for these soon to be mothers, yet I am also happy to be loosely connected to this time in their life because after all, it is an exciting time. I'm really excited to get in the clinic and begin my project and get to know faces and people behind these case files.
As of May 11th, I will be heading to North County Health Services located in San Marcos as well as Tri City Medical Center in Oceanside.I will be interning with a midwife and shadowing her in the clinics and hospitals during her shifts and conferences with her medical team. My daily responsibilities will include shadowing her as well as working on my individual project with focuses around research and interacting with the patients while I'm in the clinic and hospital. My project will benefit the work being done at the clinic since I am creating a survey to see what sites pregnant women use to conduct their own research about pregnancy symptoms, concerns, remedies, etc. I will then begin to gather information to see what sites are reliable and unreliable and construct a list of medically approved sites. The midwives and doctors will hand out these sites to their patients as a card of trusted sources that they recommend. This was something the staff has been wanting to do for a long time but haven't found the time to do, so I can't wait to get started. I'm most excited about absorbing all the crazy medical terms as well as actually being immersed in the medical world for a month. The medical field holds a very exciting and busy atmosphere and I'm so thankful that I get to opportunity to see the daily life of a midwife and all of the work that goes in to providing care to their patients. I think if I had anything to be nervous about it would be simply doing a good jobs since I hold a extremely high respect towards all the midwives and doctors and nurses that make up the staff and I don't want to let them down in anyway. Overall I can't wait to start next week and start working on my project.
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