Activity summary #1: First 100hrs of Internship   

 During my first 100 hours as a student intern at Sentara Careplex Hospital, I have been diligently working with and observing different leaders in action. Although my preceptor is the lead director of patient care services she has given me the opportunity to experience various roles of leadership within the hospital. Those roles included  Clinical nurse manager of the medical unit, Director of the emergency department, Director of patient care services(imaging) inpatient case management, and Manager of Operations support.  At the beginning of my internship, my preceptor and I decided to do a verbal orientation of the facility because I am already familiar with the facility because it is my current employer!  I also had the opportunity to sit with my preceptor and discuss my goals throughout this internship journey! We discussed my 3 goals for my internship and career and devised a plan to help me accomplish them! We discussed what it takes to become a leader and director and ways to help me accomplish them. In the mornings on my internship days, I sit in on the daily meetings with the director. This meeting is composed of a small group of leaders who come together and discuss the flow of the hospital. This includes patients in and out of the hospital, productivity,  issues dealing with the organization and/or patient care, and solutions to the issues all while discussing policies and procedures. I also had an opportunity to help the managers of operations with the organization of an employee engagement event. I was given a small task contribution to the company’s fall festival. The manager of operations is in charge of this event and I was given the task to look up and contact different vendors for this event. While doing this I learned about the organization, budgeting, and 2-way communication! Another job duty I was given was compromising statistical information from the Family Maternity Center into charts and graphs using excel to help organize the information and help track the trend. I also helped with the daisy award celebration. According to daisyfoundation.org, the daisy award was created to express gratitude from a family that experiences extraordinary nursing.  I got the chance to deliver these awards alongside our daisy team to those deserving nurses on the 3 different units in Sentara Careplex hospital! My first 100 hour’s have been nothing short of amazing! This a great opportunity for me to get an inside view of leadership in action before I venture into this new career path! 

Activity Summary #2: Last 100 hrs of internship  

During my second half of my  internship  as a student intern at Sentara Careplex Hospital I was introduced to a few different areas of leadership.   Everyday morning as always I attend the daily morning huddle with the leadership team.  The things that I did differently in the second half of my internship was that I got to work with the patient discharge team, PCS (patient care supervisor),  the unit coordinator of the intensive care unit, and unit coordinator for the safety and quality department.  While working with the discharge team I was able to navigate applications on the computer and print out education for patients related to their care and discharge plans. While working with the ICU nurse I had the opportunity to respond to hospital overhead calls such as MRT (medical response team). A MRT is called when a patient’s status changes or if issues occur and the patient needs to be assessed to see if a higher level of care is needed.  The ICU team leader has to report to medical response team calls. Although I could only observe these matters I learned a great deal. After the MRT is called and the issues are resolved the ICU nurse and I would discuss what happened and I had the opportunity to ask questions or get clarity on certain things that I may not have understood.  Working with the PCS (patient care supervisors) we would report to MRT, stroke alerts, and also go over bed assignments. When a patient comes into the emergency department and the need to be admitted to the hospital is determined it is the PCS duty to assign a patient  to a room and a care team.  As an intern, Watching the PCS do their job is very confusing and overwhelming   but they make it look so easy.  This internship has been very meaningful to me because as an aspiring manager and healthcare administrator I now have a greater aapreciation for those in leadership roles in any healthcare capacity!