Spending four weeks at the Health Service Journal was an invaluable opportunity for me, and gave me a chance to experience many aspects of journalism and the news industry. Being an international student I have always struggled to convey information and concepts in writing. There were plenty of opportunities to practice this at the HSJ, and obviously this allowed me to greatly improve my writing skills. Questioning to find out information was an everyday job as well, and I had to interview a number of important people, who were heavily involved in health policy. In this task active listening and understanding relevant points was crucial as I found out with time. I was also required to present to an audience made up of my colleagues during team meetings on Wednesdays. This was a useful hour during which I could get feedback on the work and research I was doing from experienced journalists. Their contribution helped to keep me on track and also helped with difficult situations. Everyone was friendly and willing to teach you, despite being overloaded with work, which I thought was great! In addition, as part of my research I had to analyse numerical and graphical information, something that I don’t get a chance to do at university as part of my course, and is a useful skill to have in the current competitive job market. Lastly, my research made the front cover of the journal (of course after some intense editing from my senior colleagues), which was something I never expected to happen, and knowing that your work is going to be read by thousands of people and make an impact was a nice feeling.
During my 6 weeks at BUPA I was given several projects as well as a number of side jobs. Since BUPA is an insurance company, I had to switch on my business acumen straight away. I was required to think strategically and try to see the wider picture, which was much more difficult that I have ever imagined. You always hear people say: “look at the bigger picture”, but when you actually come to doing it, you are overwhelmed with the complexity of the situation. My manager was quite keen on me taking initiative and always pushed me to think about problems in my own way rather than follow the standard corporate approach. Having never worked for an insurance company before I had to absorb new information quickly, which was good practice for the future, as we will always find ourselves in novel environments. As part of my projects I had to gather information and come up with creative solutions for BUPA in the near future. This generating of entrepreneurial ideas was something that I have always enjoyed, and an opportunity to do in the real world whilst working on real projects was exhilarating. Lastly, BUPA is an organisation with a lot of people, which meant that I had to collaborate with others to achieve goals, as well as adapt to their needs and styles.
In conclusion, I would like to say how grateful I am to DIN for organising these two internships for me, which gave me an opportunity to experience something else to medicine and develop a number of skills which are just not taught in medical school.
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