Bridging the Gap Between Academic Studies and Professional Practice: Administrative Internship Program

Podcast Transcript

Dr. James K. Stoller:

Hello and welcome to MedEd Thread, a Cleveland Clinic Education Institute podcast that explores the latest innovations in medical education and amplifies the tremendous work of our educators across the enterprise.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Hello, welcome to today's episode of MedEd Thread, an education podcast exploring the administrative track of Cleveland Clinic's Science and College Internship program. I'm your host, Dr. Tony Tizzano, director of Student and Learner Health here at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. Today, I'm very pleased to have Toby Jones, college administrative intern in the program here to join us. Toby, welcome to the podcast.

Toby Jones:

Hi, Dr. Tizzano, thanks for having me.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

And call me Tony, please. Toby, to get started, if you could give us a little sense of, you know, how you got here, about yourself, what your role here is at Cleveland Clinic.

Toby Jones:

Yeah, of course. So I'm a Cleveland native. I was born and raised in Richmond Heights, Ohio. So Cleveland Clinic's always been really close by for me. I went to a small, private high school in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, and right now I'm at John Carroll University, where I'm pursuing an undergraduate degree in biology. In high school, I was introduced to the science internship program at Cleveland Clinic, and I've worked along that program ever since, both as a high school intern and, more recently, as a college administrative intern.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

So how many years altogether have you actually been part of this program one way or another?

Toby Jones:

It's been about seven or eight years. Yeah.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

So I think it stands to reason that you like it.

Toby Jones:

I, I love it. (laughs)

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Well, fabulous. So, in today's segment, we'll focus on the administrative track of the clinic's Science and College Internship program, one of the many opportunities within CYCE, our Center for Youth and College Education. So Toby, if you could please frame the topic a bit for us, so that our learners have a sense of where we're headed here.

Toby Jones:

Of course. So first, the Center for Youth and College Education has a couple different programs. So there's a high school science summer internship program, and that aims to provide high school students with clinical experience, exposing them to careers in different fields that they might be interested in. And this also helps them build a professional network while they're doing that.

In this program, there's a lot of different tracks, so students can be paired with a variety of different mentors, whether they're doctors, nurses, PCNAs, laboratory technicians, clinical technicians, the list goes on. And they spend seven weeks or so working with these mentors, and then they present a final poster project at our graduation ceremony at the end of the summer.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

So that's fabulous. So it's fair to say, then, you know, we think of Cleveland Clinic, we think of healthcare, but there's a lot of support that goes into this that is ancillary, and without it, we couldn't possibly function. So to get in the program that you're in now, what is required to enter?

Toby Jones:

Of course. So for our science high school internship program, you need a 2.5 GPA. These students are residents of Northeast Ohio, and their schools will be in Northeast Ohio as well. They'll write an essay demonstrating their interest in healthcare, and there'll be a small interview process with a selection committee, and it's a pretty competitive application process, I will say. Last summer, we had over 500 applicants.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Well, I would say so. For how many positions?

Toby Jones:

We had a little over 100.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Okay, so a lot of work goes into it. Who goes after the administrative program that you're in?

Toby Jones:

Yeah, so CYCE's administrative college summer internship program is gonna focus on allowing undergrad students like myself to gain administrative experiences within the Education Institute. The administrative track interns usually end up working pretty closely with one of our high school internship programs. So for me, I worked with the science internship program, and we helped plan, manage, facilitate projects, or we work with other departments helping to analyze data or working with administrators to accomplish specific objectives.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

So if I recall from an earlier conversation, you know, you took a couple of turns in your thinking as you looked at these programs. So what sparked your interest in pursuing the administrative track versus the other alternatives that were available to you?

Toby Jones:

Yeah, definitely. So I was exposed to the clinical side of healthcare in high school, and I kinda just decided that it might not be the best fit for me, so I decided to explore different options. And the administrative track was something that was available to me. It was presented to me, and I thought I might like it, and I ended up falling in love with it. So it's a great experience.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

You know, I love hearing that because, you know, a lot of times we think, "Okay, I'm gonna do something. It points me in this direction. I have to keep going in this direction." But in the case of yourself, you thought, "You know what? Maybe not a good fit. What else is there?" And you know that is every bit as important as saying, "Boy, did I find what I wanna do." Finding what you don't wanna do, before you find yourself in an educational program that you've shelled out a lot of money for so on and so forth. Is that a reasonable perspective around that?

Toby Jones:

Oh, absolutely, it is. But I also will say it's hard. It's difficult kinda being comfortable in that unknown and taking that leap of faith. Definitely.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Yeah, well, I'm impressed. Seven years, that's incredible.

Toby Jones:

(laughs)

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

So what were the most challenging areas among the programs that you've been in?

Toby Jones:

Yeah, so we deal with high school students, ultimately. So making sure that they are motivated, and introducing them to a professional workplace is a lot of what we deal with. Making sure they understand how to network, making sure they know the importance of first impressions and those soft skills that we take for granted a lot of the times in a professional work setting. Crafting emails or just understanding the importance of being on time to specific meetings, things like that.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Yeah, and what about are there opportunities for networking and interfacing with other professionals that this may be their first time ever doing that?

Toby Jones:

Absolutely. A lot of these students, they aren't aware of the different fields of healthcare that Cleveland Clinic offers. And so not only being exposed to their mentors, but the mentors of the friends that they make while they're in the program, or people that they just run into as they're doing their job is super important to them.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Yeah, and you know, when you work with professionals, there are certain expectations. There's accountability, there's timeliness, and I would bet, for most, when they're coming in and they are being faced with someone out of high school or even earlier, and they're wearing a suit or they've got a white coat, it can almost be a little intimidating. But getting comfortable with that seems to me to be a really key benefit because later, when you finally decide, "Gee, this is a career path and I'm meeting someone in an interview," you wanna maintain eye contact. You wanna look like you're comfortable. You want a good handshake. I mean, those are things we don't think about, we maybe take for granted. Is, is there something to that as well?

Toby Jones:

I think so. I think, at least I can speak for myself, exposure to, like you said, speaking with physicians, speaking to administrators, speaking with executives, and working alongside of them at a young age has given me confidence, and it's helped me to navigate different career paths that I might wanna be interested in as I graduate college.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Very good. You mentioned posters, and I imagine that you probably had a poster as well. Can you tell us a little bit about yours and what you brought forth?

Toby Jones:

Sure, so back when I was in the program, I was placed under a nurse manager, back when the Mentor Hospital was not (laughs) the Mentor Hospital. We were the medical office building at the time. The nurse manager there wanted to focus on decreasing avoidable utilizations of the emergency department. So she would look at all the charts of the patients under the providers there, and we would investigate if some of these trips to the emergency room were avoidable. Could they be taken care of at urgent cares? Could they have came in to see their primary care physician? Or could we have handled their situation in a different way?

Ultimately, the reason for doing this was to decrease costs for the patient and decrease costs for the hospital. So the data that I ended up collecting and analyzing actually ended up becoming a long-term project that I believe is still going on.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Excellent. So, yeah, you're right. The emergency room's an expensive place, so I guess if you can thwart some of these patients towards another venue that doesn't have those costs associated, it benefits everybody. Were there other posters that you did as well?

Toby Jones:

Yeah, so the year after, I worked with a psychiatrist. We investigated different types of anxiety in youth, and then COVID took a little turn with things (laughs), and then I'm here as a college intern, and I do a kinda different poster presentation. Mainly, my poster now focuses on results of student engagement and the work that I do as a college intern.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

So Toby, when the poster presentations are done, the one that I got to see, there were a group of students. And there's an opportunity for people to go ahead and look at that information, and perhaps some individuals are even assigned a certain number of posters to look at. Is this an opportunity for them to weigh and measure and give some feedback to these?

Toby Jones:

Yeah. So during our graduation ceremony, sometimes mentors will have multiple students that they work with over the summer, and then a lot of times, we like to get our mentors more involved, and we like to assign them certain posters to look at. We'd like to tell them to look at different students' posters and to kinda get a feel for the other areas that students are placed in and are working in. We have our mentors do that, and we also have individuals within the Education Institute as a whole do that, and it kinda gives the opportunity for more people to see our students work. And it gives the students an opportunity to hear feedback from a variety of different people.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Great, and that's always important. So you mentioned high school and then college internship programs that are available. How do those differ and... or what are the prerequisites like from one to the other?

Toby Jones:

Yeah, so the high school requirements are a little bit different than the college requirements. In college, we still want you to be a resident of Northeast Ohio. You don't have to go to a college in Northeast Ohio, because this is a program in the summer. So if you're home for the summer and you're back in, you know, your hometown of Northeast Ohio, you can come back and participate in this college internship program but a couple majors, we look for. Things like public health, any major in STEM or premed, education majors, business administration majors, healthcare administration majors, all those kind of majors will prove useful for these programs.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Yeah. Well, that's a broad range, but I know that there's a broad range of experiences available. So at the end of the day, as you reflect back on what you've accomplished thus far over these seven years, what are some of the most key takeaways that you would say to someone who is interested? I got this, I got that.

Toby Jones:

Key takeaways. That's a really good question. I think that the biggest thing, and we touched on it already, is confidence. I feel like I am still constantly being exposed to different things at Cleveland Clinic and in healthcare in general. I love new exposures. I know I love getting to know new things, but at the same time, instead of being intimidated by it, I think these internships helped me to have a growth mindset and to be confident as I enter new situations. I still want to keep learning, keep growing and developing, and that's honestly something that I'll keep doing, especially as I continue to look for jobs post graduation. But the biggest thing I think I've taken away from this internship is having a growth mindset.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Excellent. So along the way, as you met one person and then another, did your trajectory take a turn here and there?

Toby Jones:

It absolutely did. I was very interested in medicine, and I still am, but my strong suit, I think, just ended up being on display as I continued working with different program managers and administrators in my program.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

So you obviously found out about this, and it has worked out so well. How does someone get started?

Toby Jones:

You can always get started by going to CYCE's website in Cleveland Clinic under the Education Institute, and sending emails or starting to apply.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

And then do you get put on a mailing list? Or these things come to you? Or?

Toby Jones:

Yeah. Well, right now our applications are open, so you can apply directly to the programs, and eventually, when they do close, you will be able to be put on a wait list. You will be able to email the email that's listed on the website and get more information there.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Fabulous. So as you look at what's on the horizon, what do you think might be future things the program might do, if you have any insight into that? What would you like to see done? 

Toby Jones:

Yeah, I would love to see our programs expand. And I know that's the general consensus among, like I said, my program managers and my administrator in CYCE. We wanna keep expanding. We wanna keep getting more mentors from different areas of Cleveland Clinic. We wanna get a diverse background, a diverse perspective for our students to have experiences under.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Yeah, I think the whole thing sounds just wonderful. Are there any final thoughts you have or questions that I should have asked that I didn't

Toby Jones:

Yeah. I mean, I just wanna reiterate one more time, there are a ton of different branches of health care, and these programs are gonna help students either solidify what they want to do in healthcare or in their life, or it can encourage them to seek something else, or it might even help them fall in love with something different, like I did.

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

Excellent. Well, Toby, thank you so much. I think you're pretty much the poster person for this when I listen to you talk.

Toby Jones:

(laughs)

Dr. Tony Tizzano:

This has been a wonderful and insightful episode of MedEd Thread. To our listeners, if you'd like to suggest a medical education topic to us or comment on the episode, please email us at education@ccf.org. Thank you very much for joining, and we look forward to seeing you on our next podcast. Have a wonderful day.

Dr. James K. Stoller:

This concludes this episode of MedEd Thread, a Cleveland Clinic Education Institute podcast. Be sure to subscribe to hear new episodes via iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, thanks for listening to MedEd Thread, and please join us again soon.