This summer, I’m grateful I was given the opportunity to intern alongside the public health nurse of the Posey County Health Department, Kelli Goede, RN. I was able to apply for and secure this internship through the Wabash Global Health Initiative. I’m very thankful that I was accepted as an intern because I was able to further my knowledge of public health.
Throughout this internship I was able to work on multiple different projects. One of which was being given the responsibility of finding Narcan grants and suppliers in order to distribute doses of Narcan to different Posey County corporations. Narcan is a brand of the medicine naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses that is administered to people as a nasal spray. Narcan has saved five Posey County lives since 2022 and has saved hundreds of thousands of lives across the United States. The doses that we received through the grants I found were distributed to different fire stations, police stations, and the sheriffs department. This was one of my favorite jobs as I felt a sense of purpose in coordinating the distribution of a life-saving drug.
Another one of my responsibilities as an intern was to assist the public health nurse in her everyday responsibilities such as administering vaccines to patients and helping people with different health issues. I enjoyed this part of the job because I have always enjoyed helping people in need and I gained lots of experience helping people in pain and how to deal with different situations.
The final days of my internship consisted of testing the levels of lead in young children’s blood at a local pre-school and day care. This was one of the more difficult parts of the job as children can be very disgruntled when having their fingers pricked to test their blood. I had to help calm down children whose parents weren’t present and make them feel comfortable with our nurse. I was even given the opportunity to test blood for lead myself. This was not always an easy task but over time it became easier and I was happy to help the children.
This internship was a wonderful learning experience that I am grateful to have had as it helps prepare me for my possible future in public health. I would like to Thank Kelli Goede, RN and the rest of the employees of the Posey County Health Department for a wonderful experience as an intern and trusting me with the responsibilities I was given. I would also like to thank Wabash College, the Global Health Initiative, and Jill Rogers for helping me get the chance for this opportunity. I am very thankful for the knowledge and experience that I gained from my internship at the Posey County Health Department!
