I truly enjoyed my summer working for University Hospital’s Women’s Health Services. It was the perfect internship, since it provided me with an opportunity to hone my clinical skills, continue learning, give back to my community, and still have plenty of free time left to enjoy the summer.
Over the eight weeks of the internship I experienced many different aspects of OB/GYN care. About a third of my time was spent in the office on the first floor of the Hoxworth Building where I assisted in filing and updating charts as well as creating new OB charts. This provided the opportunity to become familiar with the general layout of the ACOG (American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology) OB charts, as well as typical patient complaints and complications, and the testing and education that occurs during pregnancy. The other two thirds of my time was spent shadowing and working in clinics. I regularly attended two of the eighteen community clinics in Cincinnati. One of the clinics (East End Health Center) was a Neighborhood Health Clinic, and the other (Braxton-Cann Medical Center) was a Cincinnati Health Department Clinic. At both of these clinics I shadowed and assisted the CNMs and eventually performed patient interviews, physicals, and education on my own with feedback and supervision as necessary from the midwives. I also learned how to write up the encounters in SOAP note format. My experience in these clinics was very rewarding because I was able to see patients on consecutive visits and establish relationships with them.
I also spent time shadowing in several clinics at UH, including the Diabetes and Pregnancy Clinic, Maternal Complications of Pregnancy Clinic (MCPC), Maternal-Fetal Medicine Clinic (MFM), and the Dysplasia Clinic. Additionally, I was able to observe both fetal ultrasounds for dating and anatomy, and Non-Stress Testing (NST), which is the monitoring of fetal heart rate in high-risk pregnancies. I also shadowed morning rounds in the NICU and was able to attend a vaginal delivery in the L&D with one of the patients I had gotten to know. It was amazing to see the miracle of birth first hand, to help the patient relax and push, to learn about what goes on during labor and delivery, and about the testing that the infant receives following delivery. The very best part, however, was getting to hold the newborn infant.
Working with the staff at UH Women’s Health Services taught me the importance of providing holistic healthcare that is tailored to the individual, taking into account their ability to pay, their access to transportation, and their cultural norms. So many of the women I saw had multiple issues, and all of them had little or no insurance. It was overwhelming and disheartening at times to work with a population that has such a huge need when I could do so little to help them, but I found that it made the help I could provide that much more valuable and rewarding.
On a practical level, I gained a greater confidence and comfort level in talking to and examining patients because of this internship. For example, I became comfortable with measuring fundal heights and finding fetal heart tones, which will help me during my OB/GYN rotation third year. I also became more comfortable with determining what information is relevant to the current problem, writing up encounters, and presenting patients, which are skills that will help me in any specialty I choose to go into.