Summer Internship: Iowa City VA Medical Center



By: Bryan Visser
A couple of weeks ago I walked into the family room to find my 5 year pinning my 2 year to ground and then forcing him to say “you are the coolest” before letting him up. After swiftly punishing the older son (then laughing hysterically) I sent the boys downstairs to play. No more than five minutes later I heard a nerve pinching scream from my 5 year old. Rather than finding him hurt, I found him fighting to get a spider trap (covered in dead bugs) off of his foot. Despite the traumatizing experience, I couldn’t help but think “what comes around goes around.” Why did I share that story? It is far more interesting than the rest of this blog, that’s why! 

I spent my summer as a Quality Improvement Intern at the Iowa City VA Medical Center….I should clarify something. This internship was not an administrative internship. It was financed out of the VA Rural Health Resource Center, and the work that I did in regards to access was done for the VA Quality Scholars (VAQS) fellowship program. VAQS is a program that allows practicing physicians to gain quality improvement (QI) training and then to use that training in the execution of QI projects/research in clinical practice. The access project that I worked on is being led by Dr. Josh Buck, a practicing neurologist at the VA (who is also entering the Executive MHA program in the fall). Dr. Buck has significant interest in both access metrics and physician performance measures. All of the work that I did was for Dr. Buck’s project, which will take him two years to complete. In addition to working on Dr. Buck’s project I am lucky enough to be completing my Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt by leading a project that will reduce the amount of time spent by new residents placing orders in the VA’s electronic medical record. 

Aside from my adventures in parenthood, my summer has consisted of lots of golf, BBQ, and binge watching the following TV shows; Orange is The New Black, VEEP, Louie, Orphan Black, and The Americans. #crushedit

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