Brendan interned for Massachusetts General Hospital as a research assistant during Spring/Summer 2022 semester.
Describe a day in your life as an intern.
During my internship, I spent my day running experiments that assessed cognitive recovery and behavior following anesthesia in rat models. I prepared drugs for IV administration, trained rats to complete behavioral tasks, administered anesthesia, recorded behavior, and made sure the animals were properly cared for. I also performed analysis of video recordings, sectioned and imaged brains, and discussed findings with other lab members.
What industry/job specific skills did you learn?
I learned to prepare drugs at precisely calculated doses, to insert IV catheters, to administer anesthesia with both anesthetic gases and IV drugs, to properly section brains and plate them on slides, to image the slides, to provide care to rodents, and to better present research findings to colleagues.
What is one thing you learned from this internship experience that could be applied to other settings?
During my internship, one of the most important principles I learned was how to collaborate with an excellent team. By dividing tasks between us and working together where appropriate, we managed to run many successful experiments each day. Other team members were also great mentors to me, and I learned so much about academia and medical research just by being around them. It is so important to appreciate mentors and team members, to develop strong relationships with them, and to learn as much as possible from them.
What was your favorite part of your internship experience?
Working with excellent team members and learning more about anesthesia, a field that I am very interested in, was my favorite part of the experience.
What was your least favorite part?
Sometimes having to perform the same experiment many times to gather sufficient data became repetitive, but I still found each day very enjoyable.
How did this internship experience affect your future goals?
This internship experience will be an important part of my application to medical school, and will even continue to help me as I apply to medical residency programs in the future, especially if I enter the anesthesia specialty.
How did you find your internship?
I found my internship through the BYU Pre-Professional Advisement Center and through the amazing creators of the Summer Premedical Research Internship Program, Britlyn Orgill and Josh Jaramillo.
How did this internship experience contribute to your growth?
I learned so much about academic medicine and became better qualified to apply to medical school and pick a specialty field in the future.
