The first half of my internship with the Alzheimer’s Association has flown by. I have gained a lot of knowledge on how the organizations works and operates and learned overall about the disease.

My first week here I sat down with my preceptor, Katie, to discuss my check list which had certain tasks on it which dates to complete them by and what my internship was going to consist of. She told me that my first couple of weeks I was going to be taking it slow , start training, and getting to know the complex Alzheimer’s Association Website. Starting in February I was going to start working on community forums and possibly attend one. In addition, I would be working on updating the Alzheimer’s Association resource manual. Lastly, we discussed how I would be the face of the organization at community fairs. 

As a part of my checklist I had a meeting with most everyone in the office. I had meetings with the Executive Director, the Family Program Manager, the Physician and Diversity Outreach manager, the Community Programs Manager, the Director of Development, and the Office manager. The goal of these meetings were for me to further learn exactly what they do for the organization in their different roles. 

The purpose of the online training that had to be done was so that I could become more educated on the organization as a whole and to see how much their website offers in regards to their services and more information on the disease and organization. 

In the next couple of weeks there were a couple of different responsibilities I had. I first was shared the South Eastern Virginia Chapter Event calendar which consisted of all support groups, events, educational groups, and forums that the chapter was a part of the chapter. My job was to make sure that all of the events that were in the PDF were also in the South Eastern Virginia Chapter google calendar with the time, date, location, etc. I also had to make flyers for the events and then upload them onto the website in the desired spot if there was not on already made. One of my other assignments was to analyze information and responses that were delivered in different forums. For example, thus far I have completed the Hampton and Smithfield summary forms. Once I complete the summaries, my preceptor and I sit down and discuss if they are correct and fit the overall forum session. 

A big project that I began to work on in my second week or so was to update the Alzheimer’s Association resource manual. I started with the in-home health care sections and to do this I had to look up the organizations and see if they were still around and providing the specific services that were needed for people with Alzheimer’s or Dementia. If the information was not applicable via their website I had to call to achieve this information. The resource manual is a large manual which is why me working on it is considered a project. I believe that I will be working on it my duration of my internship here with the Alzheimer’s Association.