A Positive Difference: After the Internship

The leaves are beginning to change, and the temperatures are starting to drop. The summer is over, and my internship experience at Piedmont Atlanta has finished. I know I promised to post weekly, but my school work, outside of the internship, utilized more and more of my time.  

As I write this blog, I have a lot to reflect on. I spent nearly 16 weeks, a total of 5 months at Piedmont Healthcare. I was one of the first to start, and the last to leave. Piedmont will forever have a special place in my heart, and I look forward to applying after graduation this December. I would like to thank the following people for making a very large impact in my internship experience: Matt, Angie, Dr. Cohen, Dr. Battey, Kathie, Tracy, Angela, Sid, and many others.

Since the last post, I got to experience various components that make up the inner-workings of the hospital and the system. Some people characterize hospitals as an airliner. Some people characterize hospitals as a factory. There are many characterizations of hospitals and healthcare systems. In my opinion, I see more resemblance between hospitals and cruise liners, however, almost any major travel or transit mode could work. For the average cruise, a person will be on board for 7 days. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED),  the average length of stay in the United State during 2017 was around 6 days, which is average (outlier is Japan with 16 days). The average crew for a cruise liner can be well into the thousands, same as a hospital. While these may not seem too surprising, hospital and cruise leadership are similar too. A captain or a CEO leads the unit, however delegating tasks or dividing responsibilities create for seamless service across the unit. There are plenty of scenarios to compare and contrast, but with both, safety is the biggest priority in delivery.

During my internship experience, I participated in several projects and activities. There are a lot of highlights from the internship experience, and I could talk for hours on it. For one of my projects, I had the opportunity to organize a collection drive for City of Refuge, a social development mission in Atlanta. City of Refuge aims to help individuals with a variety of needs. For this project, they were setting up a Nurse Aide Certification lab, and needed a variety of medical equipment (stretchers, wheelchairs, exam tables, etc.) as well as some supplies (gloves, masks, gauze, bandages, surgical tape, etc). City of Refuge provided us a list of items they needed. Through the collective work of Supply Chain, Dining, Biomedical Engineering, and several other departments, we were able to provide City of Refuge all their requested items and more! As an Eagle Scout and an aspiring healthcare administrator, it felt good to serve the community through more than providing medical treatment.

During another project, I worked for the Piedmont Healthcare Foundation. Piedmont Healthcare, in collaboration with Susan G. Komen, had the ability, through a grant program, to provide indigent women free or low-cost breast cancer screenings and treatment in the Piedmont Fayette Hospital service area. My job was to outreach to leadership in community clinics. This was a grassroots opportunity to remind clinics of the community partnership that Piedmont provides to further research and treat breast cancer. I enjoyed meeting these community leaders who provide a great deal of support to the Coweta and Fayette communities.

During my time at Piedmont, I spent a considerable amount of time in the operating room, and no, I did not perform surgery on anyone. The OR takes safety very seriously, and so one of my projects included auditing the surgical process to ensure patient safety. While I enjoyed getting to watch surgery, I had to listen carefully to the surgeon’s ability to lead to room, but more importantly when the surgeon was closing the patient’s wound. Some of the most interesting surgeries I saw included brain surgery to remove a lymphatic node, vascular surgery to remove a blockage in the carotid artery (performed by the hospital’s CEO), and robotic gastrointestinal resection. These may seem gross, but they were one of the most interesting things to watch. You really get a sense of how important your health is when you see a surgery being performed in front of you. Also, I did really enjoy putting scrubs on.

Another highlight, I got to take part in filming a show that will air on TLC. “Family by the Ton” is filmed at Piedmont. I got to help the camera crew and the patients during the days it was filmed. Some of my jobs included running errands, serving as a dolly (I pushed a camera operator around), and assisting Piedmont’s PR team with privacy for all our patients, providers, and staff that did not need to be on camera.

My final highlight, I got to help Piedmont PR team in making a patient’s day. I am a big Atlanta United fan, and Atlanta United captain, Michael Parkhurst, and Midfielder, Oliver Shannon, surprised a patient who had undergone cardiothoracic surgery. It was great to see some of my favorites make the difference in a patient’s day.  

I completed a transport time study. During my study, I paired up with a transporter to time how long it took for the transporter to start the process to the point they end the process. The department standard for transports is to complete one transport process with 15-18 minutes, from the moment summoned to the moment the job is marked complete. Throughout the study, I watched the transporter complete over 24 jobs within two 8-hour shifts, paying close attention to each process. At the end of the study, I gathered my findings, which showed the transporter exceeded expectations (within 12-15 minutes per job), however, I made recommendations that could help out the department altogether. From my recommendations, I can only hope that Piedmont looks carefully at the processes and take the needed/required ones from the unnecessary ones.

During the final weeks, Piedmont allowed me to stay for an extra month. I worked in the Medical Staff Office. While a majority of my job was administrative work, I learned about credentialing, providing, and hospital staffing. I saw hospital policy in action. Through filing, reading, and studying, I realized this is something I would be most interested in. While I love operations, hospital policy made a lot of sense to me, given my governmental/political interests. Also, I was recently turned onto a new podcast entitled "Dr. Death," about a neorosurgeon with an actual kill streak. I highly recommend this podcast (6 episodes, each are about 45 minutes). 

Piedmont is a leader in healthcare. I am honored to have the opportunity to work for them during this eventful summer. I will miss the people I worked with, the hands-on experiences, and the operations I witnessed. I am forever grateful to Piedmont for giving me such insight into my place in the industry. I plan to go to graduate school to pursue a Master’s in Health Administration. I plan to work my way up in a hospital or system. While I would love the opportunity to lead a hospital or system as soon as possible, it will take some time, but for now, I think I will look for opportunities until I graduate in December. For Piedmont, this isn’t a “good bye,” but a “see you later.”

-          Joel