Cullan Brown

Responsibilities

My responsibilities as an intern differed per day. Monday, Wednesday and Friday was the Cardiac rehabilitation days. Tuesday and Thursday were the Pulmonary rehabilitation days. On the Cardiac Rehabilitation days we had five classes throughout the day. My job for each class was to hook up each patient to a 3-Lead ECG monitor. Once hooked up I was responsible for taking their blood pressure as well and occasionally recording their pre exercise blood sugar if needed. I helped acclimate patients to understand the exercise equipment and prescribe them an appropriate exercise prescription (Relative to the specific patient and potential outliers). I also gave education lectures whenever I could. I would perform education lectures on how to use resistance bands, inform them on exercise guidelines and on occasion supervised anatomy and physiology education. On Tuesday and Thursday, I assisted with Pulmonary Rehabilitation. These days I performed the same procedures that I would with Cardiac patients, but I also recorded their O2 saturation percentages and (if necessary) how many liters of oxygen they were on. I also helped acclimate these patients with exercise equipment and answering any questions the patients had for me. I did not perform any education for Pulmonary patients.

Accomplishments

A few great accomplishments I gained from this internship was that I became knowledgeable of how to understand heart rhythms from an ECG. I was able to observe multiple surgeries such as Open Heart surgery CABG, Thoracotomy, Total Shoulder, Knee and Hip replacements, Laminectomy and Stents.

What advice would you give?

My advice for future students is to soak in every little thing you can. It seems like daunting advice to give, but understand that life is a learning process and to advance in anything you think you are passionate about requires knowledge, even if you think you already know a lot, you can always learn more. Set any ego you have aside and defer to someone who has the experience, because you can learn a great deal from them that you can later use in life to succeed.