Hi y’all!
I am over halfway done with my internship at GE-NMF, and it seems like the summer has flown by! At the beginning of the internship, I identified some learning objectives that I wanted to pursue and achieve.
- By the end of the internship, I will know the main primary care networks and health providers in the medically underserved cities of America (covered by the Primary Care Leadership Program placement sites).
- I will learn to set up and conduct webinars using WebX.
- I will identify five or more new primary care afilliates, leaders, or providers in each PCLP city that the program would benefit from reaching out to in the future.
- I will become proficient at using the Windows interface, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
- I will interview someone in the National Medical Fellowships program (or one of its partner satellite sites) about working in non-profit organizations and primary care, and what the pros/cons of that career path might be.
These objectives were specific to my internship and its goal of supporting primary care, medical leadership from under-represented demographics in healthcare, and primary care in underserved populations. Our nation is at a pivotal moment in defining healthcare delivery; and as an incoming medical student, I want to know as much as I can about what those changes might be. As a former study-abroad student in Denmark, where the “gatekeeper” model of delivery prioritizes primary care and defines the system’s goals, I was interested in comparing primary care in America to that in Denmark. This internship has given me the chance to do so.
So far, I’ve accomplished most of my learning objectives – I helped identify new primary care providers to expand the program’s outreach and have a better sense of the primary care and healthcare networks in cities from Seattle to Houston and Rochester. I have brushed up on my skills in Excel and other Windows programs, and balancing many different tasks has increased my time efficiency and responsibility.
Right now, my responsibilities are in a lull – the program events we’ve been planning for a month are currently under way, and so we are getting caught up with our programs’ scholars. The last few weeks, I’ve been busy calling alumni, drafting program materials, and doing odds and ends. Now, I’ve been focusing on end-of-program responsibilities and some administrative work. I’m currently reading Rishi Manchanda’s TEDbook Upstream Doctors to prepare for his upcoming leadership webinar with the program’s scholars!
The program has featured a lot of interdisciplinary leaders in healthcare, which has gotten me thinking about what my future career might look like. I know I want to be a physician (and I’m currently applying to medical school!) but I want to be able to take a wider scope as well – I want to write about health and medical innovations. I would love to be a physician-journalist like The Atlantic’s James Hamblin, The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande, and The New York Times’ Lisa Sanders. Learning more about interdisciplinary health leaders at PCLP has given me multiple models for how I might forge my own future career path.
So far, I’m proud of the work I’ve done, but most proud that the great community at PCLP has allowed me into their family and given me the opportunity to explore the kind of interdisciplinary work I’m interested in.
Speaking of communities, I’ll talk about that in my next blog post. Until then- happy womenternships! (Is that a thing? Let’s make it a thing…)