Utah Valley Regional Medical Center Emergency Department

Recently I was at a family gathering, and I was telling some of my cousins about all of the amazing experiences I’ve had while job shadowing a pharmacist in the Emergency Department at UVRMC. One of my cousins made a comment about how it was hard for her to believe that the girl sitting in front of her was the same girl who had passed out when she got her ears pierced. Looking back at who I was then and who I am now, I can easily see that she’s right.

When I started job shadowing in the ED, I was sixteen. Despite almost being through my Associates degree, I didn’t know which educational path I was going to pursue. I didn’t know where I was going to be in a year—which college, which major—let alone what job I was going to be doing in ten years. I was terrified of the future and everything that it held. I was mortified to make decisions about my future because I knew it would make me feel tied down and stuck in one career. I was scared I was going to have to settle into a profession or field that I hated.

Now, I know exactly what I want. I know who I am and where I’m going. Instead of looming uncertainty about my future, I see endless possibilities in a field I’ve fallen completely in love with. I know where I’ll be in a year, and while I don’t know exactly what job I’ll be working at in ten years, I know it’ll be one I love and am well trained to do.

It would be a lie if I said all the changes I’ve experienced are because I job shadowed. But a lot of them are because of the time I’ve spent in the Emergency Department. The ED was always something that I didn’t think I could do, and I definitely didn’t think I would like it, but since day one, I set out to prove to myself that I could thrive there, and I did. And pretty soon, existing in the ED wasn’t hard anymore—it was fun.

I’ve honestly never felt such a sense of belonging, outside the walls of my home, than I felt at the hospital. People there know and respect me. The ED staff would go out of their way to include me and make sure I had every learning experience possible. While I was there, I felt like a future medical professional, instead of a teenage girl who didn’t really know her place in the world.

Beyond that, I truly learned who I am as a person. I learned that I occasionally get queasy and dizzy in stressful situations. I learned that blood doesn’t bother me as much as the atmosphere in the room when a patient is fighting for their life. I learned that I don’t give up, and I fight for what I want, even if it’s hard or embarrassing or out of my comfort zone. I learned that I’m strong and smart and ready to enter the world as a professional.

IHC Summer Internship

This internship was a great opportunity for me to jump right into the medical field. From day one, I was able to do meaningful work towards helping the medical/surgical floor improve the quality of its care. Early on in the internship my floor manager communicated to me the goals that she had developed for her respective area. She specifically wanted to work on improving the staff’s responsiveness. I was able to work with her and the charge nurses to create a plan that would help us accomplish this goal.

Rounding (going on rounds) with the nurses not only gave me an opportunity to validate them on their 8 behaviors of hourly rounding, but it also gave me an opportunity to view what a career as a nurse would look like. Previously I had never known how busy nurses are with all the patients that they attend. The ability of the nursing staff to listen and show compassion to each patient was extremely admirable given how busy they were.

My duties when rounding on patients were more of a quality control nature. In order to make the most of each round, I focused the questions that I would ask the patients on the goal we had set as a floor. The questions were oriented to help me understand how frequently the patient felt the nursing staff was visiting them and how quickly they felt the nurses would respond to their call button. The information given by the patients provided me with an opportunity to immediately address concerns either with the patient or with their nurse. It also provided opportunities for me to validate and give positive feedback to the nursing staff, as many of the patients were extremely pleased with the care provided to them.

Perhaps the most rewarding part of this internship has been the relationships that I have been able to build with both the nursing staff and the patients.  Among the nursing staff there is a feeling of comradery and family; it was an amazing experience to be apart of this. The nursing staff was always appreciative of my work and always took into consideration the feedback I gave. The positive environment among staff members contributed to the great healthcare provided on the Medical/Surgical floor.  

This internship was a valuable experience for me. It helped to understand the importance of responsive nurses. It also helped in my ability to see how crucial it is for all members of the hospital staff to work together in order to provide the best care possible. It was an amazing opportunity to participate in providing good health care for patients.

-Jon 

Patient Experience Internship at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center

During Winter Semester 2015, I realized how important it was I start taking the initiative to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The countless options were daunting and all I knew was that I had to start somewhere. I had the fortune of talking to the right person at the right time. One day, I noticed a fellow student wearing a suit. I asked him what he was wearing the suit for and he ended up sharing with me an e-mail address I later used to get myself involved in the Patient Experience Internship at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. I took the internship as a way to help me accomplish two goals; to help me find out if I wanted to pursue a career in healthcare, and help me develop the communication skills I would need in any future career.

The Patient Experience Internship was unlike anything I had expected. I found it to be an amazing networking opportunity. I met several administrators and managers from the hospital and I even got to work alongside them in several service projects. I learned to incorporate the hospitals motto into my life, “Helping people live the healthiest lives possible.” Our internship itself also had another motto, “Be always.” The internship was geared at helping us become the best employee possible at all times; to teach us what grit, hard work, and ingenuity were. Our main goal was to improve the experience each patient had in the hospital, and it was solely our responsibility to form relationships with the patients, the nurses, and their managers to make sure changes were made to improve the hospital’s overall rating.

The environment that exists in Intermountain Healthcare is unique. Walking into the hospital quickly became my favorite part of the day. The employees are trained to smile and greet you. I got to have meaningful conversations with many of them. I even had lunch with several employees. The nurse manager taught me a lot about how to reward employees and how to run an office with love and respect. I admired the things he taught me and the insight he had on healthcare. With his help, and the help of the other interns, I learned to communicate with patients during their darkest hour to help them feel less anxiety. With the patients, I incorporated the things I learned from the nurse manager and I had even more meaningful conversations.

 I ended up putting a lot more time than I had previously anticipated into this internship. If I could go back, I would probably sign up for another credit. I left the internship being reassured that healthcare is the most rewarding career I could pick and I would not rather be doing anything else. Being able to leave each day knowing I made a difference is something I definitely want to have in my career. Over time, it was interesting to see how much easier it was to communicate with patients and nurses at times when communicating may have been difficult or even painful. I am excited to apply what I learn into my future jobs and Internships and I hope I now have the tools I need to really make a difference in the lives of many people.                         

-Jared 

Intermountain Healthcare

            My internship at Intermountain Healthcare was one of my strongest learning experiences I have had at BYU.  Through daily experience, the changing world of healthcare was explained effectively.  I saw what hospitals are doing to get ready for Obamacare, by preparing their staffs and programs to efficiently maintain the rules of Obamacare.  Without my internship, my knowledge of HCAPHS would be minimal. Now I know staff performance affects each hospital’s reimbursement rate.

            In my internship, my main responsibility was “rounding on” patients, asking questions about their care in the Emergency Department.  Hospitals will only receive full reimbursements from the government by improving their HCAPHS scores. The best way for hospitals to heighten their HCAPHS scores is by improving nurse communication consistency, responsiveness, and pain management.  Nurse communication is the biggest contributor to a hospital’s HCAPHS scores. So, my job, when I went “rounding on” patients would be to ask all important questions.  How is the medicine to take?  What did they expect from the information from their labs or tests?  What was their pain level?  For the most part in talking about their care, all of the patients had the best things to say about the nurses and staff members.

Truly, the nurses that work in the emergency department are some of the brightest nurses I have ever encountered. Several of the patients echoed that belief back to me.  I once saw a nurse helping a patient carry her belongings, including a baby, to the patient’s car.  A nurse’s ability to make a patient not only understand but care about a patient, I believe, makes them gain their health back more quickly.  I had a fantastic time rubbing elbows, and gaining wisdom from the nurses.

Next, the actual staff helped me to see the process of running a hospital.  Each has their part or specific job.  Those who take blood, those who give breathing treatments, those who take x-rays each have a specific task to accomplish that must be done properly to maintain the scores each hospital receives.   And the fact that those individuals all work independently throughout the day or night shift illustrates that a hospital would be a large undertaking for an administrator.   The doctors, though the directing part of the system by ordering labs, treatments and procedures, are only a small part of a much larger service.

It could seem daunting to manage a group as diverse as the staff at a hospital, or, at least highly problematic without a specific protocol of enforcement.  I was able to see this firsthand with the use of a program that all the interns were asked to work with, called AIDET.  AIDET stands for acknowledge, introduce, duration, explain, and thank you.  AIDET is one of the up and coming “best practices” programs that hospitals are starting to use.  Intermountain was one of the first to implement AIDET.  This program illustrates the quality a hospital can achieve with their patients.  It takes consistency to work through problems of duration with patients. The problem that Intermountain has been having is to get all staff members to commit to use AIDET with every patient under their care.  The nurses that were committed to AIDET performed efficiently with enhanced communication.  However, the nurses that didn’t commit to AIDET struggled with their communication skills and had inconsistent results.

My increase of knowledge of the health care system is something I needed not only for my professional life but my personal life as well.  This opportunity to do an internship at Intermountain Healthcare helped me plan for my professional career quite specifically.  If a person’s understanding of a future job can be enhanced through knowledge of how a system works, then the chances of a consistent, enjoyable job is also more likely.  This internship taught me so much about how hospitals operate and the problems hospitals face.  The depth and breadth of diverse problems a hospital can face took time to believe.  At one point I wondered if it were possible to overcome the budget and human communication problems I saw.  Yet, once I began to learn the various protocols that were used in the emergency department I could see that skills could increase if they were followed, especially by using the HCAPHS scoring system.

Further, the guest speakers we had throughout the internship became a highlight of my time by giving me insight into different fields within healthcare. There was one common theme from the guest speakers, and it was how they got to where they are now.  All of them had very different paths getting into healthcare, an assortment of varying degrees and jobs they worked in before coming to Intermountain.  Since I am now considering becoming a hospital administrator, the path of the speakers was of keen interest to me.  Do I go for an MBA or an MPA?  How many years of experience should I strive to get before I enter graduate school?  Each speaker helped me look at decisions I was about to make. The Intermountain internship was a great experience that I would definitely recommend to anyone thinking about looking to work in the healthcare career field.  

Intermountain Healthcare: UVRMC Patient Experience Administrative Internship--Kody

PATIENT EXPERIENCE INTERNSHIP

Over the course of Fall Semester 2013, it was my pleasure to be on the Patient Experience team at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, part of the Intermountain Healthcare system.  This internship allowed me the opportunity to interact daily with the administration of the hospital.  For a person interested in pursuing a future in Healthcare Administration, this internship is a great tool.

A typical day...well there is no typical day in administration, there is always something new!  I was assigned to work in the Emergency Department validating caregiver behavior and ensuring excellent patient care.  It was not uncommon to meet regularly with upper management in board meetings, weekly team huddles, and a quarterly Leadership Summit.  I learned how to understand the language of healthcare in current times, and gained a better understanding of its future.

Every week the interns met in a team meeting to listen to healthcare professionals discuss
ways to improve patient experience and overall better clinical outcomes.  In this meeting, the interns are also assigned to read and discuss a book or two that educates on an evidence based framework that reduces patient anxiety and improves clinical communication.

All-in-all I learned so much about the ins and outs of the administration of a hospital.  I have decided from this internship that healthcare administration is for me!

Provo Ut; Intermountain Healthcare Cardio Rehabilitation- Kaitlin "100 Day Heart Challenge"

For the last 100 days, I have had the opportunity of working with the 100-day heart challenge participants here at the hospital in Provo.  At the beginning of the program, I was given three participants for whom I would devise work-out routines, and essentially, oversee their physical fitness during the course of the challenge.  With my three participants this summer, I have seen struggles, disappoints, failures, heart aches, successes, and joys.  I have watched as they have motivated themselves to work through pain and trials to change their lives for the better.

I will admit, at the onset, I was skeptical.  I did not really know if 100 days could make a significant difference in the lives of these individuals.  How wrong I was!  And the benefits run deeper than I ever could have imagined.  They are physical, emotional, and spiritual.  Not only have these people learned to sweat and enjoy it (both physically as well as through emotional and spiritual trials as well) but I have gained so much from my experience with them.  Not only have I learned that I actually could love personal training (who knew?), but I've seen the examples of these individuals, and have learned greatly from their life wisdom.  Each has been a blessing to me in my life as I struggle through the many decisions I am facing.

Soon, these contestants will have their final weigh in, and one of them will be declared a winner, but to me they are all winners because of the decision they made to change their lives for the better.  At this time, our paths will part, but I know that I will forever be changed by the decision I made to do an internship this summer. 

Debre Zeit, Ethiopia: Engage Now Africa Internship -Logan

I completed an internship with a nongovernmental organization called Engage Now Africa. The internship was based in Debre Zeit, Ethiopia. Debre Zeit is located about an hour south of the capital of Ethiopia. My duties in the internship included gathering data concerning the humanitarian projects completed in the villages, volunteering and shadowing at the local hospital, and teaching English at a local school. It was a very engaging and interesting internship that helped me develop understanding of foreign health care and aid.

            My wife and I arrived in Ethiopia and were trained by Diana Bingham who is the country director of Engage Now Africa (ENA) in Ethiopia. We were introduced to the local staff and situated into our housing. After a day of training, Diana left to go back to America and we went to work. It was difficult to get started at first due to the Ethiopian staff. We immediately learned that the Ethiopian culture is very laid back in meeting deadlines. We would often plan our day full of activities and only accomplish a handful due to Ethiopian culture. ENA has built schools, sanitary wells, and health posts throughout the villages surrounding Debre Zeit. It was our job to travel to these projects and collect data, testimonials, and pictures that could be utilized to produce results for the donors of ENA. We were able to travel to a lot of projects and collect a lot of data and pictures. It was great to see all the good that has been done due to ENA’s efforts. There were many villages that had gone without a school until ENA came and built the school. After the school was built it was handed over to the government, which would then higher teachers to run the school. Thousands of children are now able to attend school thanks to ENA. Wells were also dug by ENA, which has helped decrease the amount of disease due to unclean water. ENA drills for water and then sets up a pump and caps the well to prevent contamination. ENA also has set up health posts throughout the villages, which brings medical help to the people. Villagers can travel to these health posts and receive basic healthcare that would normally cause death without care.

            My wife and I were also able to teach English at a local school in Debre Zeit. The national language in Ethiopia is Amharic. The villagers rarely speak English but they need to know English in order to be employed in Ethiopia. We were able to teach English at a school. The children were more than willing to learn the language to get ahead in life. We did a lot of exercises and played a lot of English learning games. By the end of the internship the children were able to carry out a basic conversation with someone on the street. Hopefully this spark of learning will motivate them to continue to learn the language and get ahead in life.

            I am a premedical student, so I wanted to get some insight on the health care system in Ethiopia. I was able to arrange with the Debre Zeit hospital a shadowing and volunteering opportunity. Every day I would spend a few hours in the hospital shadowing different doctors. I saw a lot of typhoid, HIV, and malaria. There were also a lot of car accidents, fighting injuries, and abuse. I saw a lot of cases that I would not be able to see in America. I was also able to clean parts of the hospital and make lots of gauze. The doctors are educated and employed by the government. The government pays the doctors very little to work at the hospitals. To make more money the doctors usually work at a private practice and spend little time at the hospital. Due to this issue, the nurses see most of the patients at the hospital. I feel the health care system can be improved in Ethiopia by training the doctors, donating new equipment, and helping reform government health care services.

            This internship helped me get a better perspective of the world. I enjoyed meeting different types of people along the way and learning from their strengths. I learned that there is much good that can be done throughout the world. There are basic needs that every human should have met and I feel like there are many people not getting the necessities. 

If you are interested in Engage Now Africa, here is the link: http://www.engagenowafrica.org/

Ghana, Africa; Kennedy Center Ghana Field Studies; Katie McDiarmid

This past Fall semester (2011), I had the great opportunity to perform a field study in the Ashanti region of Ghana and to work with the Seventh-Day Adventist hospital there. I volunteered with one of the only physical therapists in the region as well as the maternal and child health clinic there. As part of my field study, I conducted a research project addressing the affects of cultural tradition on westernized medicine in rural areas of Ghana. I was blessed to be able to interview many physicians and patients, learning from them in the process. I was also able to work with the physical therapist in advocating physical therapy as a viable form of medicine. There isn't a lot of support for physical therapy (from the government or the public), as it is a relatively new system in third-world countries. I plan to use my research and the experiences I have had to further my education in international development and health promotion so that someday I can return (or travel elsewhere) to establish physical therapy clinics and outreach programs in rural areas of Africa.