Teresa Winkelmann

Responsibilities

My intern responsibilities were to take manual blood pressure at rest and during exercise and create exercise prescriptions with the help of cardiac rehab nurses. I used a pulse ox on non-monitored patients and had to put the telemetry leads on monitored patients. I also would lead the group weight exercises before each class.

Accomplishments

My greatest accomplishment of this experience was seeing a patient come in on their first day barely able to walk and leaving on their last day able to walk for 30 minutes straight on a treadmill. To me, that is an accomplishment because I was able to be a part of their journey through rehab by providing my knowledge about health and exercise as much as I could.

Learning experience

One of the greatest lessons I learned in cardiac rehab was a little bit can go a long way. The patients there are very different physically and mentally than a young healthy adult and it was important to take it slow and progress one thing at a time.

What advice would you give?

My advice would be to try new things and do more than one internship/job related to your major because you might not know if you like something until you are doing it in the real world.