In order to familiarize students with medical practices and expose them to the atmosphere of modern health care, UNC Health Care offers the opportunity to work as an Administrative Intern at UNC Hospitals in the summer.
The internship lasts the entirety of the summer (12 weeks), starting in late May or early June and ending in late August. It is considered to be fulltime employment with regular working hours, which I assume would be from 9-5pm five days a week (40 hour work week).
As interns, students will get the opportunity to experience the day-to-day of hospital life, learning job skills as well as the nuances of hospital work. Interns will work in departments within the UNC hospitals in which they have a specific career interest, performing analytical work and observing clinical procedures for data collection and analysis. As part of the program, interns will meet with mentors and their fellow interns every week to learn from each other, discussing responses to certain medical scenarios. Cumulative experiences and data collection in an intern’s specific department will result in an end-of-summer presentation. This presentation is aimed to report trends observed in health care that can lead to future improvement or development of new research.
To be eligible to apply for the Administrative Internship, students must be currently pursuing or have recently finished a degree in undergraduate or graduate studies, and have completed a minimum of one semester of classes of either of these programs. Interns are also expected to be of good academic standing, therefore applicants are required to have a cumulative 3.0 GPA or greater. Being legally eligible for work in the US is a requirement as well, as the internship is considered to be a full-time job. The application for the internship requires a cover letter, resume and a specific cover sheet available on the application website.
As a pre-med student at Chapel Hill considering the field of emergency medicine, this internship program would be incredibly beneficial to my future career, as it would provide the opportunity for me to gain experiential learning in a hospital setting. In addition to my enjoying observing the behind-the-scenes of medicine, such an opportunity is invaluable on medical school applications. The fact that this internship is at UNC Hospitals is also a bonus, as this hospital system is ahead of the game in medical research and patient care and is one of the strongest teaching hospitals in the nation.
As for drawbacks of attending the program, there are few and only consist of financial and logistical issues. While the internship is paid as if it were a full-time job, room and board, transportation and food is not covered, and so enrolling in the program may not be a financially sound investment. However, despite these potential minor financial drawbacks, I believe this internship to be a good investment of my time and will by no means pass it over.