BLOG N˚10 | Interview Reflection

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

I have just recently switched mentorships but both have been incredibly helpful and insightful towards my senior topic. My first mentorship was at a general practice clinic where I shadowed nurses at a clinic setting. Clinics are small and cover, for the most part, basically anything as far as health care goes whereas in the hospital, I only work in one department specified for a certain part of healthcare. In the clinic, I helped give blood pressure, give out blood tests, help call in patients, file in medical records, and more. In my new mentorship, I am volunteering at the Queen Of The Valley hospital where I help out at the Labor & Delivery department. In a hospital, everything is much bigger and definitely a lot more fast-paced and overwhelming. I usually provide the patients with things they want such as ice or pillows, deliver blood and urine tests to the lab, put tags on the newborn babies, and many more. This has done many things as far as gaining experience in my senior topic and in many ways, has done much more. Being surrounded by the environment that I am very interested in has given me a lot more depth into knowing how the health care team works as far as a profession and a field.

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you? 

My father was a registered nurse at Queen Of The Valley hospital (he has since transferred to a different hospital). However, through him, I have met Tiffany Ramirez who helps organize hospital volunteers. It wasn't very difficult at all to convince her to help me as she has worked with my father before and has worked with many teenagers in my position.

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person?

As she is very experienced with working with young teenagers (some who haven't even had volunteer experience prior to coming to he hospital), she was extremely kind and helpful and makes me feel at ease in an environment where it can get extremely stressful. Moreover, my position as a volunteer at Queen Of The Valley seems very secure and something I would be able to keep for a long while. I haven't spent much time so far working with my new department but they have had many junior volunteers before and know exactly how to handle volunteers who have not have had the experience and who may not understand medical language. The doctors and nurses I work with are extremely kind and in no way make me feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed as they try to be as helpful as they can.

 
4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

As Tiffany is a very kind person, she didn't intimidate me at all in the interview and I a;ways find it so easy to talk to her. I felt the interview was very natural and didn't really feel like an interview at all. However, I wish I could've asked a lot more follow-up questions to help me get the most information I could possibly have gotten. This is something I will keep in my mind for my next interview to come and to really take advantage of possibly one of the best resources one could have in wanting to work in the medical field - the source of a person in the field themselves. 

INTERVIEW N˚2 | An Interview With Tiffany Ramirez

What is your name and what is your job?

Tiffany Ramirez and I am the corporate director of volunteer service for Citrus Health Valley Partners. So I oversee all the volunteer programs for the organization.

What would be your favorite thing about your job?

Favorite part of my job is being able to interact with the volunteers who are so passionate about giving back to their community hospitals.

If you were to give yourself when you first started, what would give yourself?

Wow, well that's a good question. What advice would I give myself when I first started? Maybe to take time to really enjoy the volunteers and not get so wrapped up in the office aspect or the clerical aspect but to really get to enjoy the friendships and the personalities they would have and get to know them as people because them as individuals is just a huge part of it and they are great people. I wish I would've, nine years ago, taken more time to really get to build those relationships instead of being so caught up in the paper part of it.

You work very closely with patient care related jobs.

Yes that is correct.

What are some tips you can give to a new hospital volunteer?

Definitely be assertive. Try to make yourself as useful as you can and really try and ask who you're working with "how can I help?" or "what can I do?" This would let the health care team know that you really want to make the effort to help out and that you really want to be there. Also, I believe you mentioned the main reason you wanted to volunteer is because you wanted experience in the field prior to studying it in college?

Yes, that is the main reason why, yes.

You know, and you want to really maximize the opportunity you have. If you have the advantage to be around the environment what could possibly be your future profession, try to really ask a lot of questions and really try to make the most out of the tasks you have been given as a student volunteer.

Is there anybody you would recommend for future interviews about patient care?

I would definitely say the nurses and doctors you have in your department. A lot of them have had been in this field for a few decades so they definitely would have a lot to say about your senior topic.

BLOG N˚9 | Advisory Prep N˚3

1. State whether or not you currently have a mentor, and what the status of your interview is with that person (I have completed the interview, I have scheduled the interview, I have not scheduled the interview, etc).

At this very moment, I am in the middle of switching mentors. I used to intern at Dahiya General Practice Clinic in Carson, CA whereas now, I will be volunteering at Queen Of The Valley Hospital in West Covina, CA (working in the maternity department). I haven't scheduled an interview as I am not sure who I will be interviewing for my second interview as I am in the middle of switching mentors. However, I will most likely be interviewing with my first mentor who is a registered nurse at the Carson clinic.

2. At this point, your research is probably guiding your studies toward more specific areas within your topic.  Name the area or two you find most promising and explain your reasons.  

Specific studies in my research is going towards nursing and becoming a registered nurse. Whenever I am at my mentorship, I am always following the registered nurses instead of the doctors for a number of reasons. For one, doctors simply do not have the time to stop and explain to an intern what exactly they are doing. Since there are usually several nurses to one doctor, I would be able to help out with the nurses with a number of different tasks. Furthermore, my very first mentor (and my first interviewee) is a registered nurse working in the emergency room department at Queen Of The Valley hospital. Being able to interview an RN and work closely beside many registered nurses has given me an extensive idea of what role nurses take part in to delivering patient care. Although doctors may be the leaders of the healthcare team in a hospital or clinic, nurses tend to spend a lot more time with patients than the doctors do themselves. This would be because the nurses would have to prepare the patients before they see the doctor, communicating with the patients by asking questions about their condition, taking their blood pressure, etc. With a topic as general as patient care, from what I've observed, no health care provider works closer with individual patients than the nurses.

3. What kinds of sources do you think will help you in the next month to gain more research depth?  Where will you go to get them?

There are many medical journals by registered nurses and podcasts that I could definitely look into. Podcasts are usually found online (a podcast by the name of MediCast is found in iTunes for free and is hosted by different paramedics each week discussing recent innovations in effective patient care) and different online medical journals (such as The American Journal Of Nursing - the oldest and longest-running nursing journal in the world - and Medscape, which provides an archive of medical journals from different sources, decades, and a variety of topics). With technology today, extensive research can be completely done from the internet as long as sources are reliable.

4. Write down a possible EQ.  Please don't worry about wording other than ensuring that it provides the option for multiple correct answers.  At this point, the senior team is most interested in understanding your thought process.

With my extensive research on patient care, many possible EQ's have come up to my mind. However, one I am most interested in and will be working towards to answer through extensive research is:

What is the most vital component towards delivering effective patient care?

Now this questions brings up many things with specific words. "Most vital component" is is crucial the question specifically asks for what is the single most important element. "Delivering effective patient care" implies that healthcare teams should be not only patient-centric, but most importantly an emphasis on the word "effective." 

BLOG N˚8 | Independent Component N˚1 Proposal

1) Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours?

For my independent component, I decided to take on some classes at a company called First Class CPR (you can visit their website here). At First Class CPR, it is a full on course on teaching people how to perform CPR on many different types of people of a variety ages. Before doing hands-on training, I would have to take online courses through their website and this is self-paced depending on how comfortable I am with getting the gist on CPR performance before I actually perform it.

After taking this online course, I would have to go to their building down at Upland where I will work with an instructor on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays to train me physically how to perform CPR within 30 days of the completion of my online course. Each class takes 2 1/2 hours to complete. I will be working with other groups of people as well in this class as we all learn how to perform adult CPR and AED use, infant CPR, child CPR and AED use, and much more!

After completing my training with the instructor and class, my skills will then be evaluated by an authorized AHA Heartsaver Instructor. If I do perform what I've learned correctly and effectively, I will then be given a certificate from the American Heart Association.

2) Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence?

Although showing evidence of the online course can be quite tricky, I will take many screenshots of my online course and my certification of completion of my online classes. Once I have my course already completed, I will have to physically be with an instructor and a group of people who will also be learning how to perform CPR. Each class with an instructor takes 2 1/2 hours long and the classes are on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. I will take many photos for evidence and provide the contact information of my CPR instructor so you can check-in if I have been coming to their class regularly. Once completely my training with the instructor, I will be tested and hopefully receive my certificate.

3) Discuss how or what will be doing will help you explore your topic more in depth.

As my topic is patient care, CPR is one of the basics one can learn to dip their feet in the water of healthcare. From taking the online courses, I will definitely have a more in-depth understanding on how our hearts work and a more in-depth understanding on how to save a person's life in certain situations. As I have never performed CPR before, this will definitely a very unique experience for me and a very useful one (even if I wasn't planning to work in the field of patient care!). I am anticipating that working with the instructor and training with other people who want to learn about the subject as well will not only give me a different perspective on how to perform CPR in a way online courses couldn't, but would hopefully motivate me and excite me to learn more about saving a person's life. Not only will I officially be titled "CPR Certified" completing this course, but I hope to get a better understanding on how to care for a patient.