Interested in learning about healthcare at a public safety net hospital? Do you want to support direct patient care opportunities?
Boston Medical Center might be the IAP Health host site for you!
Who are they?
The Autism Program at Boston Medical Center assists and empowers autistic individuals and their families through direct patient support, provider education, and community-based outreach. We strive to meet the needs of the community in Boston and its surrounding areas in a culturally competent manner by offering high quality and comprehensive care to all.
What projects might I work on?
Interns may be assigned to any of the following program areas:
General Programmatic Operations: This project groups works under the director to assist in identifying and writing grants, solicit community partnerships, liaise with stakeholders and support projects not otherwise specified.
Autism Friendly Initiative: This project group focuses on scaling up autism friendly interventions, collecting data on intervention effectiveness, tailor trainings, conduct autism support checklist screeners, disseminate sensory friendly toolkits, and other efforts to evolve and expand the autism friendly hospital initiative.
Autism Resource Support: This project groups works under our autism resource specialists to support family support efforts including identifying resources and programming for families in their local community, processing referrals for outside therapeutic services, developing tailored social stories and visuals, engaging with families over the phone to identify needs, creating new written resources, contributing to our newsletter content, managing social media efforts, and supporting the work of staff in empowering families to follow through on action steps needed.
What do projects look like?
Last year’s sample projects included:
- Creating a “virtual reality” website where patients can explore our actual pediatric clinic space and feel more comfortable with what to expect when they arrive to BMC
- Developing a safety guide for transition aged youth as well as a sexual health and wellness guide
- Supporting direct patient care opportunities with our Autism Resource Specialists
- Supporting direct patient care opportunities within our Feeding Clinic
- Developing our 2023 annual report, inclusive of soliciting quotes from families
- Collecting Autism Support Checklist information from patients
- Developing Social Stories to help patients feel more familiar with new types of procedures and exams
- Resource development as needed
What could I expect to learn from this experience?
- How to work effectively on a multidisciplinary team
- How to support autistic individuals and their families in a variety of settings
- How healthcare practices such as large, academic hospitals operate as it relates to provision of specialized resource support to patients
- Opportunity to shadow a Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrician for one of their clinic shifts and observe a developmental evaluation session.
- The specific landscape of autism resources available to our patients in Massachusetts/New England
What skills are they looking for in a strong candidate?
- Ability to work well on a team and in both in-person/remote settings
- Autonomous, self-directed, and able to meet deadlines
- Able to receive constructive feedback
- Comfortable speaking professionally thru email and over the phone with patients and stakeholders
- Fluency in Microsoft office suite preferred: word, excel, outlook
- Graphic design experience always appreciated
- Ability to communicate in languages other than English appreciated but not required
- Ability to speak about their desire to gain experience working with the autism and developmental disability space, rather than just “general healthcare experience”
I want to learn more about IAP Health and the Boston Medical Center host site!
Join us for an info session September 18, 2024 at Wellbeing Lab (Third floor of W20) from 5 pm to 7 pm!
Note: Applications will close on Friday, October 11th
