Jessica Brittany Smith

Reflection Paper
04/21/2019

Introduction

My name is Brittany Smith. I interned at Medical Center Navicent Health in Macon, Ga.

Opening in 1895, was simply known as the Macon hospital. Changing names several times

throughout the years. When it was established it was a hospital that was only big enough for 20

inpatients. With Dr Olin Weaver and his staff of 7, they served a population of 22,000 residents.

Changing names several times throughout the years, the hospital has continued to grow and expand

into what is now known as Navicent Health. It currently is a 637 bed, full service, acute care

hospital and Level 1 Trauma Center that serves approximately 750,000 residents in Central and

South Georgia. Navicent is also the second largest hospital in the state.

In my department within the hospital we are a staff of about 20. Our role is to ensure that the

hospital is a place where patients can come and receive safe compassionate care. The clients that we

serve are the patients from Central and South Georgia but we also serve the staff of the facility to

ensure that they have the knowledge that they need in order to continue to provide the safe

compassionate care that these families are looking to receive. The mission of MCNH is “Together,

we elevate health and well-being through compassionate care.”

Description of Experiences: My role as an intern was originally to manage the electronic hand

hygiene monitoring system. This was important as they are trying to continue to reduce Healthcare

Acquired Infections through implementing and eventually expanding this system hospital wide. In

order to be able to continue to expand administration wants to see that the compliance rates are

increasing and the HAIS are decreasing. This requires a full-time person to focus on this and

manage the system so that it is as effective as research shows. As I have grown in my time at
MNCH, I have expanded into more of an Infection Preventionist role, working closely with all of

our Infection Preventionists and many staff house wide to ensure that the staff are complying with

Isolation Precautions for Infectious Diseases and that these patients are receiving compassionate,

safe care in the process.

I love people and I love having a variety throughout my day. What is exciting about this

internship is that I get to not be tied to a desk all day long. I get to be out on the floors and units

talking with the staff and building their trust but also never truly knowing what each day will bring

as I walk into the office in the morning. The most challenging part for me was that I am not

necessarily seeing the impact that I am making on these patients. As this is a place where the

extremely ill come to receive care, it has been hard for me knowing that these clients/patients we

serve may never get to go back home. It has been hard to swallow knowing that there are people

house wide that may be on their death bed and that each and every action these staff take may cause

them to either be provided with the care they need or s simple thing such as lack of handwashing

may cause the spread of infection from one patient to another. I wish that I could have been more

out on the floors educating the staff about the importance of hand hygiene and infection prevention.

I, however, have a Manager who is extremely hard to please and she is also very set in her ways.

This is hard because I have had ideas and desires to educate these staff but, need her approval

before this is able to happen. I hope that in these next two weeks maybe I will get there but if not, I

know that I have been able to use one on one education with each of the staff that I speak to on a

daily basis.

Perception and Evaluation of the Internship: Honestly, the internship exceeded my expectations.

As I began my internship, I did not know what to expect. However, as time has gone on, I have built

respect and trust with many of the nurses and unit leaders as I have been out on the units talking
with the staff. I have also been blessed with the opportunity to sit in on various committee meetings

and get to be able to get an inside look on the day to day operations of the hospital.

The organization was somewhat open to my ideas and contributions. As I mentioned in the

paragraph above, I feel like this was something that has taken time and that my manager being set in

her ways does not help. I think that if I were to have been at MCNH longer than 4 months I might

have gotten to that point where she is more understanding and accepting to my ideas. In regards to

my contributions, I have been greatly appreciated by each of the staff members that I have worked

with including the Manager of Infection Prevention. The supervision from my site supervisor was

not very effective in my opinion. With the department being so large and covering so many

different aspects of Quality and being short staffed, she was consistently busy and in meetings. I do,

however, feel like I could go to her anytime that I needed anything in regards to my Internship. I

also was very confused with the structure of our department and who I needed to report to.

With the Department directors now being gone, this has confused as to who we each directly

report to. I now, report directly to my Manager of Infection thrown everyone for a loop, and we are

now Prevention and feel like she is more aware of what my day to day tasks are and is more

effective in supervising me. This internship experience could have been improved by allowing me

to educate the staff and to create more resources that the facility can use to improve their infection

rates as well as hand hygiene compliance hospital wide. Even with my concerns and the confusion,

I do recommend this site to future interns. I feel like this internship site was exactly what I needed

to be able to expand my knowledge and my experience needed for my future career. It has also let

me network with many people in many different roles from Medical Doctors and Residents to

Nurses as well as other administrative professionals. It also has allowed me to grow my passion to

work in a large hospital such as this working with residents and medical professionals in an
educational setting. I can also see myself going back to pursue a Masters in Epidemiology and

pursuing a career in Infection Prevention and Patient Safety.

Internship Preparedness: Georgia College has prepared me well for this experience, however, as

an intern, I realized that there is always learning that takes place. No matter how prepared that you

think you are, the world and your internship experience will throw experiences your way that teach

you things that cannot be taught in the classroom. I felt most confident in my communication skills

and the ability to adapt to a new environment with new people. I felt like I blended in very well very

quickly and that soon grew to love each of the staff that I have worked with as well as built trust and

professional relationships with the unit staff fairly quickly as well. I did not feel as confident in

recalling all of the material that I have learned during the course of my career at GCSU. I think that

this is due to having a large lapse of time between the time that I took these classes and utilizing the

content from these classes in my internship. I used information from courses like Epidemiology and

Environmental Health as well as a little from Community Health. These courses taught me and

prepared me well for being in a large hospital such as MCNH and has prepared me well for paying

close attention to the factors that influence the causes of the spread of HAIs but also factors that

influence the reduction of the spread of infections as well. Epidemiology has helped me most,

simply because it along with Environmental Health exposed me to the knowledge about various

infectious diseases that I have used primarily this semester. GCSU can help us expand our

knowledge and prepare us better for the future by encouraging more filed experiences throughout

the course of our career in college and providing more training and certification courses along with

the classes that are taught and required for the program. GCSU can also prepare us better by

bringing in more guest speakers to teach the courses and bring insight into what it is currently like

to be working in the Healthcare/Public Health setting.

Internship Performance: The biggest skill that I have learned is how to expand your network but

also how to continue to build on the skillsets that are already your strongest as well as improve on

the ones that are your weakest. I have learned how to better communicate one on one with staff but

also have learned how to get up and speak in front of large groups of people. I still would say that

group presentations are not my strongest skill but will say that these skills are something that I have

expanded little by little this semester. I was not highly satisfied with my performance on my

assignments. I was never really given anything this semester that had an imminent deadline but

rather given tasks that needed to be completed on a daily basis. I never really worked on a project

that expanded over multiple days or had a specific deadline. That being said, I feel like this has not

changed my level of efficiency. I still, if am asked to complete a task get it done in a timely manner

and can usually multitask in the process. I feel like the Quality of my work this semester has been

high, I do think that the dynamics of my internship site help with this though. The tasks that I am

given are ones that already have an established process and really require more critical thinking

rather than problem solving skills. I think in order to become successful after graduation, I need to

continue to develop my large group communication skills as well as to establish a firm foundation

for really grow my problem-solving skills.

Personal/Professional Insights/Benefits: This internship has shown me that I want to work in a

large Teaching Hospital like this. It has also taught me that maybe I do want to pursue a career in

Infection Prevention or maybe even Graduate Medical Education Coordinator or Residency

Coordinator. It has shown me the MDs and Residents really are the target audience that are

important and are the ones that influence the rest of the staff hospital wide.

I have learned and confirmed a lot about myself this semester. I am definitely a people person. Put

me in a climate where I am able to expand my knowledge and can grow my comfort zone I will

thrive well. It takes time but I have learned how to embrace being uncomfortable and to expand my
comfort zone in the process. I have become more confident this semester and have been able to

expand my communication skills. I also have learned that learning and growing never stops. I have

gained lots of knowledge about the way our Health System functions and the impact that this has on

the care that the patients receive. I have learned that the quality of a staff’s care has much more to

do with their personality and their character than it does with their education level. I also learned

that when you are in the healthcare system, you need to be able to have a source of release for all

your emotions. Some days are tougher than others but being able to leave these emotions at work is

extremely important. Also, it helps if you have co-workers that support you in the process of

growing in your career. It might not be everyone that has the ability to do this but there is always

one person maybe 2-3 if you dig deep enough that will become special to you and that will take you

under their wing and teach you in the field. Navigating the healthcare system is hard and the

patients need someone there who will be able to advocate for them and the care they receive while

they are in the hospital. I cannot say enough about this experience. I think that all internship sites

have their benefits and their setbacks but knowing that each and every opportunity is a learning

experience is what has made this entire experience worth it. For me there is a mix of emotions that

we are at the end of the semester, but I would not be the person I am today without having had this

experience.