By Lauren McKenzie
Summer 2013
Georgetown University Hospital, where I am an intern.
Coming to DC as an intern for the summer I had no idea what to expect, and truth be told, part of me was still mourning the fact that I wouldn’t be going to London instead. As a rising senior at Boston University, I knew I needed to get more internship experience to be better prepared for graduation and any graduate program after that. Being that I am a pre-med, Human Physiology major I never really I thought I had many internship options besides laboratory work, but I decided to take my chances and apply to the internship program anyway.
Realistically speaking I wasn’t going to be able to shadow a surgeon for the summer so it was my goal to look for the next best thing. While I was initially searching for internships to apply to, I was pretty overwhelmed and didn’t know where to begin, seeing as the healthcare field is one that doesn’t offer much variety to someone with just 3/4ths of a bachelor’s degree. When the VICTORS Project at Georgetown University was first suggested to me by DC staff, I thought it was pretty interesting and seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. It’s an NIH-funded clinical study focused on strokes, technology, and underprivileged populations around D.C., Once I accepted the offer to intern here for the summer I began to get more and more excited.
Only about a month into my internship, I think it has already given me experience that I could probably never get anywhere else. Working with a clinical study has been great insight into a part of research that I had never really considered. My internship is especially great because it gives me plenty of hands on experience that will be useful in the future, such as reading and reviewing patient’s medical charts. I have become familiar with medical terminology, and I have even been able to use things I have learned in previous science courses when examining cases.
Every couple of weeks or so, another intern and I are responsible for conducting focus group with Dr. Gibbons at a hospital that partners with the study. He has been a great resource to have and has been helpful in advising me on my career goals I think my internship has been one of the most interesting ones and I have already learned a lot, not just about the study but also with what I want to do in the future. Overall this experience has been great so far and I couldn’t have asked for a better summer internship.
At my internship.
Lauren is a rising senior at BU Sargent College. She is interning at Georgetown University Hospital.
