Major: Psychology
Minors: Chemistry, Data Analysis
What was the name of the organization you worked for over the summer?
Lehigh Valley Health Network
What was your role and what did you work on?
For 8 weeks over the summer, I had the honor of interning at Lehigh Valley Health Network through the Research Scholar Program. Throughout this time, I had the opportunity to shadow various healthcare providers and work on my research project, entitled “A Decade of Skeletal Surveys: What have we learned?”
This project was on the importance of skeletal surveys (full body x-rays) as a technique in detecting occult (abusive) fractures in burn and trauma patients under the age of three. From this study, we learned that skeletal surveys should only be used in cases of high clinical suspicion of abusive fractures for burn patients, and always for trauma patients, since the prevalence of positive surveys (indicative of child abuse) in the burn population was only 4%, versus 25% in trauma patients.
The main goal of this research was to propose a new policy to the hospital in order to limit the amount of unnecessary radiation these young children undergo when admitted for injury. At the end of my 8 weeks, I presented my project to my mentors, a panel of judges, and my peers.
Throughout my time, when I was not working on my research, I had the opportunity to watch my mentor and his colleagues operate nearly every day. I shadowed a total of 150+ hours, saw over 15 types of surgeries and my mentor and his partner let me scrub in on surgeries during the end of my time. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to experience a professional hospital environment, as well as the intensity of a surgical burn unit during my time as an undergrad.
What was a highlight of your experience?
One highlight of my experience was forming connections with health professionals and hearing about their experiences and how they came to work their role. Being able to connect and form trust with people I respected so much was very inspiring to me and made me excited to teach and be a mentor myself one day. A specific experience I will never forget was when my mentor’s partner asked me to scrub in with her on an allografting procedure for a person with necrotizing fasciitis. An allograft is synthetic skin harvested from fish used for when a person has such a high percentage of burns or damaged skin on their body that they are not able to undergo skin grafting from their own body. The fish skin is used to cover the damaged skin, which in this case was deep holes (down to the muscle!) on the patient due to the necrotizing fasciitis, which is an aggressive bacterial infection that destroys soft-tissue and moves at a rapid pace. During the surgery, I prepared the allografts by keeping them moist and was even allowed to stitch/staple one of the grafts onto the skin. Truly an unforgettable experience!
How did your summer experience impact you?
Overall, this summer experience inspired me to complete the pre-med track. I came into college tentatively wanting to do it, but ultimately had decided it wasn’t for me freshman year. I realized it was still what I want to do from this internship and am currently completing my last class requirements senior year! I plan on taking 1-2 gap years and am applying to post-BAC programs in psychology in preparation for medical school applications as well as applying to the peace corps in a Spanish-speaking country to help me connect to more people and patients in healthcare.
