I am very thankful I was given this opportunity to do my internship at KWMC and

the Neighborhood Health Clinic because it opened me to the world of health care. At the

beginning I thought that I would not like working in a hospital setting and would rather

be in a smaller clinic. After both experiences, one in the hospital and one at a clinic, I

was able to see what it is like working at each one. Now I actually think I would like

working in more of a hospital setting because I liked how all the nurses worked together

with patients and the doctors on the floor.

I was able to meet some amazing nurses, doctors and medical assistants during

my internship. All of them were very encouraging and were open to all the questions I

had. Carolyn gave me a lot of advice for when it comes to the next steps of nursing

school and gave me a link to all different scholarships I should look into. Litto was also

very helpful and tried to teach me as much as he could throughout the day, even though

we were not able to see many patients. Other nurses told me their background stories

and gave me advice on how to go about nursing school as well, which I appreciated.

Over the summer I had gone to Salem Hospital and job shadowed a labor and

delivery nurse. At my time there, I was able to see a live birth and the whole shadow

experience peaked my interest in working in that field one day. When I was put into the

labor and delivery unit for KWMC, I was able to see the post birth and running tests on

the baby, where I did not get to see that at my internship that previous summer. Being

able to see the pre- birth, birth, and post- birth was amazing because now I know what

the full job was for a labor and delivery nurse, which I am still interested in today.
 My time at the Neighborhood Health Clinic was very valuable as well. There is so

many different aspects to a clinic because they treated patients for a broad spectrum,

which I never noticed how much goes into it. There are nurses on call every minute,

variety of patients coming in all being treated or needing different things, front office

staff working on scheduling. Although there was not many patients at my internship, I

was able to see how much charting the medical assistants and nurses have to do. The

one thing Litto told me to remember was to record everything you do, always. It was a

huge part of their job, and something I never considered was extremely important going

into it.

Through these internships I gained experience and knowledge that I could not

fully retain in a classroom setting. From talking with the patients, other nurses, seeing

how to run and chart different tests, and many more aspects of the job. This opportunity

I was given makes me even more interested and excited about pursuing a nursing

degree or some type of degree in the medical field.