Internship: John Heinemann

I am currently working as a graduate assistant for the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital.  My work began as an intern this summer and transitioned into my graduate assistant position.  Working for the Children’s Hospital has been a very rewarding experience and has exposed me to a wide variety of projects.  These projects allowed me to apply a wide range of relevant coursework obtained during my first year in the MHA program.

The main project I have been working on is facilities planning for the construction of the new freestanding Children’s Hospital.  The opportunity to be involved in such a project is a very unique opportunity for a graduate student. I have gained valuable experience about the arduous task of building a new hospital.  My preceptor/boss is chair of one of the ten interdisciplinary user groups assembled to provide design a patient- and family-centered Children’s Hospital.  The user groups work directly with the architects to develop programming, design the schematics, and ensure a patient-centered experience for of our patients. I spent a major portion of my time this summer attending meetings and developing benchmarks with our recently constructed children’s hospitals. In addition to meetings, I collaborated with our Family and Youth Advisory Councils to gain valuable feedback on our pediatric programming. The advisory councils provide firsthand experience and are a valuable learning tool for every member of our interdisciplinary team. The facilities programming project has been very fascinating. Doing it for the kids can’t get any sweeter than building a brand new building. 

Along with the facility planning, I have been working on patient satisfaction data for each department in Children and Women’s Services. I have been tasked with developing key driver reports for each unit and analyzing Press-Ganey data to compare against other pediatric institutions. Each unit report consists of key metrics identified by the nurse manager as opportunities for improvement.  The main focus of the project is to transparently display data throughout Children’s and Women’s Services to promote collaboration amongst the various units. Our executive director is very passionate about improving patient satisfaction. Sifting through the mountains of available data seems monotonous and time consuming; however, remembering that our focus is to improve the experience for kids keeps me going. 

Things operate differently in a pediatric hospital and the enthusiastic attitudes are contagious even on a bad day. I am very passionate about my projects and look forward to continuing my work in at a pediatric hospital in the future.