Internships in France

My summer abroad with SageCorps was incredible. During my 8 weeks in Lisbon, I gained incredible, hands-on work experience at my start-up, made friends I will know and cherish for life, and created many unforgettable new memories. SageCorps not only provides you with a worthwhile experience that allows for both professional and personal growth, but it also sets you up for success ahead of time. The access to LinkedIn Learning provided ahead of time, their resume workshops, and interview prep meetings helped me get the internship of my dreams, and I couldn't be more grateful.

After my time with IMA, I will be quick to recommend this Internship with anyone who is interested! This internship taught me numerous lessons that will stick with me for a lifetime. Among many things, I learned how medicine has the power to remind people of the value and dignity of their life. This opportunity has made me even more excited to pursue a future in Medicine. Outside of the hospital, the accommodation that the program offers are exceptional. The IMA staff is so kind and work incredibly hard to give every intern the best experience. Typically when someone is asked why they want to work in the medical field, they might respond by saying it is because they want to help people in a tangible and hands-on manner. Growing up with no family members in the healthcare field, I never really thought about working in medicine until I was a junior in high school. What drew me to the medical field was, in fact, the opportunity to help others. However, as time goes on, my perspective and understanding of medicine has exponentially grown and developed beyond “helping others”. Yes, medicine without a doubt gives someone the ability to help a hurting person, but it goes much deeper. My time in Kenya exposed me to that deeper motivation and helped further develop my reason for why I want to pursue a career helping others. Everyone in life needs a ‘why’, a reason for why you want to do what you want to do. Knowing your ‘why’ brings perspective, clarity and direction to life and the way you choose to live it. Having a why grounds you and makes you a steady, thoughtful person even in the midst of adversity. My time in Kenya has given me a different ‘why’ for practicing medicine, a ‘why’ that I am eager to explain. During my internship I spent time in three different rotations with extra shifts in other departments. My view of medicine grew in different and unexpected ways during each of the rotations. My first week was spent in the Accident & Emergency Department, getting to see both pediatric and adult patients. Patients who came into the A&E often had wounds that smelled foul, defects that made them look different, and injuries that were grotesque. Additionally, there were patients who were brought in dead (BID) and placed in a small exposed hallway until their family arrived. I also encountered many younger patients who had been abandoned by friends and family. As the week went on, I began to understand the power that those who work in the medical field have: the power to rehumanize the dehumanized. The word re-humanize implies the process of restoring human dignity, value, and respect where dignity has been diminished or deprived. Circumstances or illnesses that bring patients to the hospital leave many of them in a dehumanized condition. However, medicine gives physicians and nurses the means to pursue and draw close to those patients, to restore human dignity, value and respect. Those who practice medicine are able to engage with these same patients, look them in the eye, help bind up their wounds and give them excellent care. This concept of re-humanization was something that I had never associated with medicine before my rotation in the A&E, and it continued to grow throughout my other rotations. I spent the second week in the Obstetrics Department, and I feel that this rotation was the one that surprised me the most and, at times, was the hardest to observe. I learned that all patient care in OB is free for mothers and babies (Brian Barasa Masaba & Mmusi-Phetoe, 2020). The majority of nurses and physicians were exceptional and treated their patients with great care, while there was a small minority who struggled with the idea of free health care. As I observed, my new perspective of medicine as a means of restoring dignity and value continued to grow. I began to grasp that just because medicine has the power to rehumanize people, does not mean that a doctor or nurse will exercise its power. The kind of medical professional you are is not only related to the foundational knowledge and experience gained in school. It is also just as related to who you are as a person and who you desire to be for your patients. A health care worker’s moral and ethical qualities, who they are when no one is looking, what they believe about the dignity of human life, and how they demonstrate these qualities to their patients is vital. If your patient needs to be gently cared for, you gently care for them. If your patient needs to be reassured and met with peace, you reassure them and meet them with peace. If they need a truthful explanation of a procedure, you patiently deliver information honestly. A good physician meets medical needs, while an exceptional physician considers who they need to be for their patient, and becomes that, while also meeting their medical needs. In the OB Department I understood this difference and realized that all the nurses and doctors were good, and some were truly exceptional. To be exceptional, you realize the power that you have to give excellent medical care and you strive to exercise that power by showing each patient dignity, honor and respect. I hope and desire that this knowledge gained from Kenya will help me not just be a good Physician's Assistant, but an exceptional one. My last week was spent in the surgical department. I thoroughly enjoyed this rotation and I was able to learn so much because of all the different cases I was exposed to. I watched everything from brain and spine surgeries to amputations and hydrocephalus surgeries. Anesthesia is not as commonly used in Kenya as it is in the US, due to lack of access to it and lack of safety resources when using it (Epiu et al., 2017). So, patients are either fully under anesthesia or they are awake but covered so they do not panic during surgery. Surgery at times can feel exposing and dehumanizing. You are laying on a cold table only covered with a sheet while many eyes stare at you. As I watched the surgeons I realized that their patients really did not know what was going on due to them either being asleep, or awake, but covered. Because of this, the surgeons and nurses hold a lot of power. This made me think about what I will do when my patients cannot speak, feel, see or move for themselves. How will I seek to protect their humanity and dignity in a time where they cannot do it for themselves? How will I choose to treat them in the moments when they will never have any idea how I actually treated them? Medicine has the power to re-humanize, but will this still be executed even when no one is looking? I hope that I strive to protect the humanity, dignity and value instilled in every patient, even when they are not watching. While I learned so much about medicine inside the hospital walls, I also grew in my understanding of a different culture during my time talking to the nurses and spending time outside of the hospital. I learned a lot about Kenyan culture and the way Kenyans think. One of the big things I learned is that if you leave Kenya without having learned any Swahili, it is considered rude because you have not invested in their culture (Odhiambo, P., & Njeru, C). I realized that if you want to show someone you care about them, it is crucial to invest in the things they invest in, to care about the things they care about. This can be true when you are halfway across the world with strangers or when you are in the comfort of your own home town with friends and family. Showing interest in someone’s life and caring for them is rooted in investing in their life and the things that matter to them. The ability to invest in others I believe also reminds people of their value, worth, and dignity. I was amazed at how much Kenyans know about Americans, our politics, even our stereotypes, and how much they wanted to talk about them. I was challenged by how little I knew about Kenya, so I sought to spend my time in Kenya, growing in my understanding of their worldview, their perspective, and their culture so that I could show my investment in them as individual people. I am incredibly grateful for the willingness of the staff at CGTRH to allow students from all over the world to come and learn. The kindness and eagerness from doctors and nurses to teach me was remarkable and forever impactful. My time in Kenya helped further shape the way I view medicine in light of the world around me and it fueled my desire for how I want to use medicine for the good of the world around me. This opportunity in Kenya gave me my new “why” for choosing medicine, stretching beyond the purpose of helping people. So, why medicine? Because of the opportunity and privilege medicine grants for helping rehumanize those who have been dehumanized in a way that other professions are unable to. I can now see that medicine provides a powerful way to restore dignity, value and humanity to the dehumanized. It is up to me in how I choose to exercise that power for my patients, even and especially when no one is watching. In Kenya, I saw a new side of medicine I had never seen before, a potential for medicine I had never understood before and a power of medicine I had never experienced before. My passion for medicine was ignited into a passion that cannot be contained. It is opportunities like this one in Mombasa, Kenya that make me desire to choose medicine again and again.