Summer Internships: The Emory Clinic

By T.K. Everett, Meredith Funke, and Alyssa Pennington

Celebrating Independence Day at
the Georgia Aquarium

Hi y’all! Greetings from Atlanta, Georgia, where the three of us have been working at Emory Healthcare this summer. Emory Healthcare is the largest, most comprehensive health system in Georgia and includes The Emory Clinic, eight hospitals throughout the Atlanta metro area, and a physician group practice organization. All in all, Emory Healthcare has 1,918 licensed patient beds, 16,000 employees, 200 care delivery sites, and more than 60 physician group practices throughout Metro Atlanta and the state of Georgia. Breaking news: Emory University Hospital was ranked the top hospital in the state of Georgia for the second year in a row and Emory University Hospital Midtown came in at number four in the state, according the 2013-2014 U.S. News and World Report rankings!

While all of our internships are technically through The Emory Clinic, we each have different preceptors and projects, and all three of us work within different entities. In addition to our individual projects, we have weekly “Lunch-and-Learns”, which are hour-long seminars hosted by senior leadership that focus on career advice and current events affecting Emory and the healthcare industry.

Alyssa’s project work has been done at The Emory Clinic, the largest and most comprehensive group practice in the state of Georgia, with over 1,280 physicians. She is working on the development of a department manual for Access Emory and Emory International, which coordinate care for VIP and international patients across the Emory Healthcare system. Alyssa is also working with administrators in Infection Control and Patient Safety to roll out a new Joint Commission hand hygiene compliance program. Additionally, she has observed surgical procedures in the Ambulatory Surgery Center, participated in a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, and attended a variety of meetings with clinic administrators.

Meredith is based at The Emory Clinic’s Decatur Plaza location in Referral Management and is spending a large amount of her time working with the Correspondence Center. This centralized service is dedicated to increasing care coordination and strengthening referring provider relationships by relaying clinical information to referring providers after their patient is discharged from an Emory entity. Meredith has been engaging with administrators and providers in sections across The Emory Clinic to increase utilization of this program to meet clinic-wide goals. Meredith has also been working on the complete overhaul of the Referral Management website, as well as a handful of other small projects. She has had many additional learning opportunities, including observing a procedure in Vascular Surgery, attending an assortment of meetings, and she is planning to spend time at Grady Memorial and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta in the upcoming weeks.

Emory University Hospital

T.K.’s project is at Emory University Hospital- Midtown, a 511-bed community-based, acute care teaching facility and full-service hospital located in Midtown Atlanta. He is working on process improvement within the operating room and perioperative services, and the majority of his time has been focusing on increasing patient satisfaction. In addition, he also has been helping with increasing charge capture. On top of this, he has had the opportunity to attend numerous senior meetings, observe many different surgeries, and will be shadowing the CEO of Midtown later this month.

Outside of our time spent working, we had the opportunity to serve as volunteers for Medshare, a non-profit organization in the Atlanta area. Medshare works with different medical supplies distributors and health care providers to recover overstocked or undeliverable medical supplies that would otherwise be discarded as waste. The supplies is then repackaged and shipped to countries across the globe. During our time at Medshare, the Emory interns helped package over 200 boxes of exam gloves, surgical masks, gowns, and various other materials that will be shipped to countries like Haiti, Nigeria, and the Dominican Republic this month.

We have enjoyed exploring the many neighborhoods of Atlanta in whatever free time we have, which has mostly occurred through brunches, happy hours, and dinners out with the other interns. We attended the Atlanta Summer Beer Festival, the Street Food Festival, painted masterpieces at Sips n’ Strokes, had a luxurious (and unique) movie viewing experience at the CineBistro, and much more. We recently spent our 4^th of July with the beluga whales and manta rays at the Georgia Aquarium and are planning on attending an upcoming Braves game. Life is peachy!