I am about halfway through my summer internship to my dismay!
Having been here in DC for nearly 3 weeks now, I only have another two weeks left. Nevertheless I have been very busy during my stay and believe that I am occupying my time here thoroughly.
My second week was a short one, considering that we got the 3rd off as it is a Federal Holiday and I am at the heart of the nation. At the beginning of last week Dr. El-Bayoumi was still on vacation so I spent my time with Dr. Jain, working on our research project. I completed the surveys for individuals and pharmacies (both institutional and not) and we began to give out the surveys to a few of Dr. Jain’s sleep patients as a sort of pilot run. Despite the small testing group, I have begun to enter the results and patterns are beginning to become apparent, which is interesting.
On Tuesday, I accompanied Dr. Jain to a weekly lunch at which a collection of doctors comes together to go over a patient’s case which is deemed educational or with which one of the doctors is having trouble. At the lunch meeting the doctors went over chest x-rays and lung scans of a few patients that the doctors were having difficulty diagnosing and treating.
On Wednesday, I observed Dr. El-Bayoumi in resident clinic, which was extremely interesting and diverse considering Dr. El-Bayoumi is a general internist (a sort of primary care doctor for adults). People with all sorts of issues come to see her. I had not seen Dr. El-Bayoumi “in action” before this point and realized immediately that not only is she an amazing and extremely compassionate person in general, but she is also is an amazing doctor and teacher. I am truly fortunate to be working with her!
After resident clinic, I went with her to the Ashburn, Va. campus of George Washington University to attend a Medical and Health Sciences Career camp for high schoolers at which Dr. El-Bayoumi spoke about her journey in medicine, how she came to be a general internist, and what her residency and experience in medical school was like.
The following day I attended resident clinic with her again, and once again tagged along with her and Ms. Tracie Bass (who is Dr. El-Bayoumi’s assistant of sorts, a co-founder of the Rodham Institute, and the coordinator for H.E.L.P and other Rodham Institute programs) to the Children’s Hospital to observe Dr. El-Bayoumi and Ms. Tracie speak about the state of the city, focusing primarily on Anacostia and the indigent wards and people of DC. The program is called See The City You Serve and was preluded by a bus tour to Ward 8 with residents, interns and fellows at GW. The second stage of the program was giving this talk to the residents and fellows at the Children’s Hospital. For both stages, the participants filled out surveys before and after, and the data collected gives insight into how effective the experience was on the residents on opening their eyes to the disparities in the city and in making them realize that health care is holistic and not just clinical-and that it incorporates all the social determinants of health.
I got July 3 off and took time to work on my project study for Dr. Jain.
On July 4 we (my host brother and I) went to Key Bridge to watch the fireworks which were impressive but were also rather far away and were somewhat obstructed by smoke and fog.
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