Personal Contributions to PHP
Although it is only my third week of this internship, I feel like this week I was able to demonstrate that I could make substantial contributions at the partial hospitalization program. This week I began my second rotation: insurance. This is the rotation I was least excited about. My responsibilities involve emailing therapists and doctors to inquire about whether a patient is ready for discharge, as well as calling insurance companies to acquire precertification, review, or discharge for a patient during their time at the program. For the first couple days of the rotation I observed the other clinical RA’s make these calls, but felt I was ready to do it on my own soon after. I like the freedom of being able to make the calls on my own, as well as feel like I am lessening the workload of the other staff members. The intern on the insurance rotation before me was not comfortable with making these calls alone until into the second week, so I felt helpful.
I mentioned previously that my first rotation was observing and taking notes for the structured clinical interview. After the 2-3 hour interview with a patient is complete, a very comprehensive report must be written up for the treatment team. This involves history of present illness, psychotropic history, medical history, family history, psychosocial history, risk and protective factors, mental status exam, and a primary diagnosis. I was originally told to write the psychosocial history section, but was later on given many more sections to write. I received a lot of positive feedback on my writing and appreciated being given different sections to write, especially as each patient varied so much.
A large part of my internship has been data entry. At any time we are not busy we are entering data. Because I was ahead of other interns on my data entry, I spent almost a full day this week reorganizing the entire data room in order to make it easier for interns and research assistants to find the data they are looking for, which I hope will be helpful.
It sounds like you’ve not only made contributions that are invaluable to the organization, but that you’ve demonstrated and have been recognized for quality work. Excellent! Jumping in and making insurance related calls earlier than later, writing additional elements for the comprehensive patient reports, taking initiative and reorganizing the data room…these are the kinds of actions and qualities that will be well noted by your colleagues and supervisors. I encourage you to keep a list of all the tasks, responsibilities, projects that you complete as it will serve you well when applying to graduate schools and/or interviewing for full-time jobs; having concrete examples of work you’ve completed and how those illustrate your competencies is really important.