Week 9:
Intern Symposium and Manuscript Writing

August 14, 2017

This week was full of eventful experiences. Most of the interns finished up their time here at the Children’s Hospital. Myself and two others still have another week to complete, though.

On Tuesday, we had the intern symposium. We had to prepare a presentation of our study and findings then present to the physicians and research assistants. This was by far the most nerve-wracking presentation I have ever had to give. I did not get the result for my project until Monday afternoon, so I was a bit stressed trying to interpret and decide how to convey them to a crowd in one day. Turns out, the presentation was not so bad. I was nervous, but much less intimidated than I expected.

Our study found that there was no difference in the chance of an athlete getting an opioid versus a non-athlete. These were just preliminary results, though. The method we used to find if an opioid was prescribed was not very accurate, but we used it so that I had some results to present on. We are still waiting to receive information using a specific medication coding system, which should provide more accurate results. Sadly, I am not very confident these result will come in before I leave.

Since the data entry is done and the presentations completed on Tuesday, I was able to spend the rest of the week starting the manuscript for publication. Thanks to my time at Cornell, I was able to get a lot of background research done. I even got a good chunk of the paper written. T block plan has allowed me to become a very efficient writer, which was a helpful skill to have.

On Friday, I was able to shadow another physician assistant. This time, I was in the pediatric intensive care unit. What an eye-opening experience! The kids were very ill and it was heartbreaking to see. At the same time, watching the PA interact with the families and comfort them in a time of desperation and confusion was inspiring. This is truly a field where I could make a difference in a child’s life. Before this shadow, I was pretty set on going into orthopedics once I enter my career but I realized that there are so many options to explore. I have become much more interested in the emergency medicine/PICU setting than I expected.

I spent most of my weekend writing a final paper for my internship. Since I only have a week before I move out, I started packing and cleaning the apartment. It seems impossible that my time here is almost up. Luckily, I was able to fit some more hiking in this weekend. My friend Steph from Cornell lives nearby, so we met up and went on a hike. The trail we hiked went by a waterfall and had some really cool views.