Last Week in EM Research For Now

Last week was the last week of my internship with Emergency Medicine Research at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. It was a wonderful end with a meeting on my last day where there were doughnuts provided and a gift for my time there. Everyone had great things to say and they even invited me back for the next summer if I need a paid position or for a gap year job! I am very thankful for this opportunity this summer to get my foot in the door. I already sent out thank you cards to all of the people I interacted with this summer, including the Principal Investigators, the Project Manager, and the girls I worked with directly. This was a total of 8 thank you cards. I think I will have friends and mentors for life through this experience.

The biggest learning experience I had was learning more about dealing with people and the public and also how to be assertive and confident in order to get things done. Everyone that is involved in healthcare, even people involved in research, are an important part of the healthcare team and have a job to do. I did achieve all of my goals for the internship this summer, which was to get to learn the researcher-patient interaction and to shadow some in the emergency room, along with interacting with the physicians. This internship has confirmed my career exploration process that I am on the right track to becoming a physician. I cannot wait to take care of my patients one day, and I am sure that this internship will allow me to better do so. One piece of advice I would give is to always be on time and prepared, as well as confident. Confidence is key.