Week Ten:
Children’s Hospital Colorado Center for Gait Movement and Analysis

September 7, 2015

Please ignore the gap between weeks nine and ten! With moving back to Albuquerque, then back to Mount Vernon, these last few weeks were a bit hectic and I have not had the opportunity to wrap this up! My apologies.

So, last week at Children’s! It was certainly bittersweet going into this last week. I was very excited to have my project finished up and to head back home for some potential R&R, but I had met so many wonderful individuals over the course of my time at Children’s that I was not quite ready to head back.

This week I focused on perfecting my presentation. Each intern presents their finding, whether their study is complete or not to the other interns, research assistants and the providers (so your bosses, and their bosses, no pressure!). Thankfully I was able to get feedback from my site mentor and the resident whose final project is supracondylar documentation at the hospital. Between their feedback and my own work my project was ready to present much sooner than I expected!

I spent the rest of my time preparing an introduction and abstract for the paper that we anticipate publishing on our findings. I have to say, I was pretty nervous about this. As I mentioned a few weeks back, my last paper was about butterfly populations in Iowa prairies. Not even close to supracondylar fractures! After spending a few weeks dreading this assignment I bit the bullet and gave it a shot. Overall, I was pretty impressed with what I came up with! Certainly it will be changed before being sent  publishing, but the abstract seemed to fit what was needed and the introduction only needed some changing. Not bad for a butterfly researcher, eh?

On Wednesday I, and the other interns, presented our final projects. Six years of mock trial competitions certainly prepared me for this moment. While most of the other interns were cringing at the thought of this day, I was pretty excited! I love public speaking! Plus, I was wearing my favorite suit, so nothing could go wrong. The presentation went very well, just as I expected. The only catch is that afterwards the physicians did not really ask questions. Instead, they just held a mini-conference about how they could further harness the project. But, thankfully they did this for everybody… so no big deal!

Overall, I could not be happier with my time at Children’s. This internship gave me an insider’s look at hospital life and what it takes to be a good provider. The medical professionals I watched were not just another PA or NP, they were compassionate, kind and thoughtful in their work, and in every examination. This internship has re-assured me that I do have what it takes to be a provider. As I move forward in my senior year I will continue to explore those possibilities. If I can do half as well as the providers I met and worked with this summer I will be on the right track, I will be the kind of provider I hope to always have on the other side of the table.