Autumn Kolpin

Responsibilities

My daily responsibilities included checking in and out patients through obtaining blood pressure, O2 sat, and heart rate, hooking cardiac patients up to a five-lead heart monitor, and instruct patients with individualized strength exercises. During my time, I also gained practical experience by interpreting live EKG rhythms, attended all educational classes and also taught two exercise education classes, observed pulmonary function tests, nuclear stress tests, treadmill stress test, and echocardiograms, and presented a researched educational bulletin board.

Accomplishments

My greatest accomplishment is seeing patients come through the program and exit the program feeling better. You will see a lot of different kinds of people come into cardiac and pulmonary rehab. The most rewarding feeling is seeing the patients that really care and are pushing to get better to improve. Seeing the improvement in patients confidence, strength, and endurance is exciting.

Learning experience

My greatest lesson during the internship is that it's okay to not feel confident going into the internship The point of the internship is to gain practical experience so you can work on building your confidence so you can be ready afterwards. You might not be 100% confident in your skills going into the internship and that's okay. You will learn tons during your experience so make sure you going into your internship ready to learn.

What advice would you give?

There is a lot of practical information that you will learn from your classes at Iowa State that can be important for future certifications that you might need after your undergrad. Making sure that you pay attention to your kinesiology classes is important retaining that information that is needed for the certifications.