by Amanda Dennis | Oct 17, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
Good morning! My name is Sarah Curtis (’20, she/her/hers) and I am a rising senior and biology major. This summer I am sponsored by the Jaharis Fellowship to work in primary care at Tufts Medical Center (Boston, MA). I’m going to take you through an average day of work today, so sit down and strap in! 11:30 am: Arrive at Downtown Crossing Train Station. I clip on my Tufts Employee badge and make my way through bustling downtown Boston, to Tufts Medical Center main hospital. On my way I pass through Chinatown to pick up bubble tea. Outside the tea shop, I run into one of the Mandarin-speaking patients that I see in the primary care office. We do not speak the same language, but we smile at each other in recognition. Tufts serves the diverse immigrant communities in Boston, and through my time at the hospital I have learned a great deal about the demographics of my home city. 12:00 pm: I make my way over to the Outpatient Services building. Sipping on my bubble tea, I climb three flights of stairs and make my way across the indoor “bridge” that separates inpatient and outpatient services. With my badge on, nurses and physicians smile and me, and I feel inducted into the special world of the who have studied the mysteries of the human body. I also make sure to greet every patient I see. I do not know why they wander through the hospital today- maybe to get routine blood work, or have come in for a dose of chemotherapy- but I do know that a smile can really...
by Amanda Dennis | Oct 4, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
By Arielle Schultz As a premed Biology major, my Haverford courses have given me ample exposure to the cellular processes at the root of human health. To learn more about the practice of medicine, I knew I wanted to spend this summer engaged in a patient-care centered environment. Thanks to funding from the Jaharis Primary Care Pre-Medical Internship, I spent my summer as an intern with a family medicine physician at the OptumCare clinic in Cypress, CA. Family Medicine providers see patients of all ages, which lends to an interesting variety of cases. From children who had incurred sports injuries to senior citizens developing dementia, I observed the full breadth of health care management that falls under the umbrella of Family Medicine. Some patients come in once a year for an annual physical, while others with chronic conditions may need to schedule appointments every 3-4 months. Health care providers have to be able to both manage chronic conditions over several years and quickly diagnose and assess acute illnesses and injuries. The physician I shadowed often said to patients, “Sometimes it’s my job to push you into the medical vortex, and sometimes it’s my job to pull you out.” An advantage of healthcare today is patients’ access to subspecialists who can provide expert care and innovative treatment. But diagnostics can be invasive, treatments have risks, and certain medications have negative interactions. Thus, it is part of the Primary Care provider’s job to distinguish red flags from common symptoms or signs of aging, and to advise the patient and their family on whether to consult further medical care or wait-and-see. I...
by Amanda Dennis | Sep 26, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
By Nicole Litvitskiy The Child Mind Institute I have spent my summer as a Clinical Summer Intern at the Child Mind Institute in New York City. The Child Mind Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides psychological assessment and treatment for children, adolescents, and young adults. As an intern, I had the opportunity to be involved in various aspects of the organization. As a group of seven interns, we are exposed to several treatments for a variety of psychological disorders, including receiving training on specific treatment techniques. Throughout our 11 weeks here, we all have the opportunity to observe neuropsychological testing, in which children are assessed on their IQ and several additional measures in a holistic process. Additionally, Child Mind uses Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) to treat children who present disruptive and oppositional behavior. I had the opportunity to set up these sessions, provide childcare according to PCIT guidelines, and observe these sessions. One of the biggest portions of the clinical summer internship at Child Mind is our involvement in the treatment of Selective Mutism, both in the office and off-site for a program called Brave Buddies. Selective Mutism is an anxiety disorder in which children are typically talkative at home, but experience a significant amount of anxiety outside the home that leads to an inability to speak. This makes it difficult for children with Selective Mutism to succeed in school and other social situations. The Child Mind Institute uses a behavioral approach based on PCIT to treat Selective Mutism. As part of my internship I received training on how this treatment is provided. Throughout the summer, we conducted weekly...
by Amanda Dennis | Sep 12, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Liberal Arts, Student Perspective |
By Charlie Russ Hello! My name is Charlie Russ and I am a rising senior, political science major, and Men’s lacrosse player. This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to intern at DLL. I was placed into the project management department with Matt Jennings, where I would be helping DLL roll-out their new operations system called MOSAIC. Going into it, I was nervous because I knew I would be working closely with computer developers, something I knew absolutely nothing about! However, these concerns were swiftly quelled by my supportive coworkers who were always eager to help me. Right off the bat, I was tasked with solving a critical problem in their line of communication between developers and business support. I had complete freedom to create my own solution. This was very empowering for me as an intern because not only did my supervisors entrust me with a significant problem, they also let me be creative and independent in my approach. In a nutshell, I built a new system for reporting upcoming functionality in MOSAIC to business support. This report allowed our development team to more efficiently solve production problems for business support as well as inform business support and clients of upcoming functionality being delivered. This enabled DLL to deliver more functionality faster to our customers. During this project, I built upon the communication and writing skills I have been honing at Haverford. Additionally, this project greatly enhanced my Excel skills, and I also learned how to use SalesForce. These hard technical skills are things that will definitely be useful to me in the future, and I’m elated to...
by Amanda Dennis | Sep 5, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
By Cayley Montoya ’20 Thanks to the Whitehead Internship Program, I am able to intern this summer at a travel agency called Valerie Wilson Travel. I have spent the last thirteen weeks living and working in New York City at the woman-owned, family-run business. Though I am working in the leisure department – focusing on vacations – the company also specializes in corporate travel as well as meetings and events. While I have a passion for travel, and after thirteen weeks in the business, an extensive bucket list, I was very unfamiliar with travel as an industry before applying to Whitehead. Most of my work comes from the travel advisors in my department on a need basis, therefore it is usually given to me in the moment and to be completed soon, rather than long term projects. Unlike in the corporate department, leisure travel does not require as immediate planning, and there are usually many months that go into developing a trip. The first stage of planning involves research on various destinations if the client is not set on a specific place, or on one destination to make sure it is a good time of year to visit. Once the location is set, I compare hotels, and then the advisor begins to look into flights and tours. Because our agency focuses on luxury travel, our clients usually ask for customized and privatized tours. After all the details are decided, I build the itinerary on a platform called AXUS, which once the itinerary is uploaded, the clients can access on their phone on the VWTraveler app. The most crucial advice...
by Amanda Dennis | Aug 26, 2019 | Career Exploration, General, Internships, Student Perspective |
By Harika Dabbara This summer I am working at HealthPoint through the Jaharis Primary Care Pre-Medical Internship. HealthPoint is a non-profit community health center geared towards providing healthcare to all members of the community with an emphasis on providing care to underserved communities in the area. As a pre-med student interested in community health, and having learned about various social determinants of health in my classes at Haverford, I wanted to spend the summer gaining firsthand experience of how these factors affect patients in a medical setting. I was particularly interested in working at HealthPoint because of their emphasis on providing holistic care. Their approach to health care goes beyond addressing biomedical factors affecting a patients’ health, but also addresses the unique social, cultural and behavioral factors that play a role in health outcomes. Patients are encouraged to work with providers outside of their primary care provider to help address arrive at a diagnosis. Visits often involve a nutritionist and behavioral health specialist in addition to the primary care provider, to help patients create a care plan considering the various factors that affect their health. In addition to providing holistic care to their patients, HealthPoint strives to make care accessible to the community by helping patients cover their medical costs through obtaining the proper health insurance as well as enrolling in various public and private aid programs. I think that these measures are critical to providing proper care to all patients and was really excited to become a part of an organization that values supporting patients on beyond the biomedical factors affecting them. On a day to day basis, I...
