Final Paper
By: James Dillon
Preceptor: Timothy Curley
Internship Coordinator: Manal Samaha
Internship Work Site: Children’s Hospital Central California
May 6, 2013
Table of Contents
History of Children’s Hospital Central California………………………………………………………3
Children’s Hospital Central California Description………………………………..…..………3,4,5
The Population Served…………………………………………....……………………………………………....5
Current Projects/Programs…………………………………..…………………………………………..……5,6
My Job Description………………………………………………………………………………………….…………6
Fieldwork Objectives……………………………………………………………………………………………….6,7
Public Health Competencies…………………………………………………………..………………..……….8
Work Space, Equipment, and Supervision……………………………………………………………....8
Academic Preparation for Internship…………………………………………………………..…………...9
Overall Feelings…………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..9
Suggestion of Future Placement……………………………………………………………..………….9,10
References……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11
The History Children’s Hospital Central California
Children’s Hospital Central California was started by five bright minded women who saw the need for a hospital dedicated to pediatrics in Central California. Children’s Hospital was created nearly 60 years ago by numerous fundraisers and help from the local community. In 1949 many of the hospitals guilds were formed and started to make the Children’s Hospital dream a reality. In 1950, fundraisers brought in 325,000 dollars to build the hospital. In 1951, the first medical equipment arrives to the hospital still under construction. Then in 1952, the hospital is then opened to the public and treats its first patient. As the years went on Children’s Hospital continued to be the first to receive the newest most innovative technology, providing the best care to children, and continued to be the top Children’s Hospital in the state. The dream of those five women continue today as Children’s Hospital Central California has continued to be a beautiful reality as they provide physical, emotional, and spiritual support to children. (www.childrenscentralcal.org)
Children’s Hospital Central California Description
Children’s Hospital Central California’s budget is very tight and ethically executed with an annual budget of $375 million. When speaking to Mr. Curley in regards to the financing of the hospital, I heard only good things. I brought it to his attention that non-profit hospitals do in fact make more profit on average than for-profit hospitals. He noted that it is very important that a hospital has profit and that is a good thing if you want the hospital to survive and last years into the future. It was also noted that the difference between Children’s Hospital Central California and any other for-profit hospital is that Children’s Hospital reports to a Board of Directors and puts most of their attention on the goals set by the Board of Directors while a for-profit hospital reports mostly to the shareholders that are mostly preoccupied with the profit margins rather than any health goals set by the hospital. Children’s Hospital Central California has a very good reputation of putting the lives of children first before any financial burden compensation.
The primary source of funding for the hospital is through third-party payers like insurance companies with Medi-Cal being the biggest payer. Children’s Hospital Central California does receive funding through donations from different events and generous donors. One of the main events that sparks a lot of participation is the Kids Day event where they sell a newspaper highlighting kids information to the public. The funding brought in from events and donations counts a lot to the hospitals budget and makes a big difference. The work that is done at the hospital would not be the same without the help of the community.
Children’s Hospital Central California is a non-for-profit hospital with the specialty of helping children. Children’s Hospital is the second largest children’s hospital in the state of California. The hospital resides on a 50-acre land area and contains 348 beds. The hospital has 525 physicians and has more than 2,700 employees. Children’s Hospital performs 11,000 pediatric surgeries a year and their neonatal intensive care units have the lowest mortality rates in the country. (www.childrenscentralcal.org)
The mission of the hospital “is to provide high quality, comprehensive health care services to children, regardless of their ability to pay, and to continuously improve the health and well-being of children.” The vision of the hospital “is to become the nation’s best Children’s Hospital”. Their values are excellence, compassionate care, integrity, innovation, collaboration, and stewardship. (www.childrenscentralcal.org)
The pediatric curriculum of Children’s Hospital is a broad range of specialties like:
- cardiology
- clinical care
- emergency medicine
- endocrinology
- gastroenterology
- hematology
- immunology
- infectious disease
- metabolic disease
- neonatology
- nephrology
- neurology
- oncology
- orthopedics
- pulmonology
- rehabilitation
- rheumatology
- surgery
- urology
The Populations Served
Children’s Hospital of Central California does not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. The only thing that is descriptive is the age group of individuals that may receive treatment at the hospital. The hospital only treats children, teens, and young adults all from the age of newborn to 18 years of age.
The service area of the hospital is very wide spread in Central California with a accumulated child population of 1,042,800. Children’s Hospital has a service area that consists of nine counties. Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, San Luis Obispo, Stanislaus, and Tulare are all of the nine counties located under the service area of Children’s Hospital. (www.kidsdata.org)
Current Projects/Programs
Timothy Curley who is the Government and Community Director for Children’s Hospital Central California works with the community to make sure that the goals of the hospital is being met. Every two years Children’s Hospital sets goals to meet in the service area. These goals usually consist of wide spread health problems. The current goal that the hospital has been working on is the childhood obesity epidemic. Tim has mentioned many times that the hospital has been seeing an increased amount of children with type 2 diabetes. This disease used to only be seen in older overweight/obese adults. To see this disease popping up with the children and young adolescence is troubling. That is why Tim, Kaiser Permanente, and other stakeholders have put together a Heal (Healthy Eating Active Living) Zone Initiative to target certain areas of the community where health problems are at an all-time high. Within the last three years the Heal Zone Initiative has targeted a part of Madera City that has extreme numbers of overweight/obesity. Kaiser Permanente who has partnered with Children’s Hospital has provided over a million dollars to fund this program. Together they are working on numerous ways to help heal the community.
In Madera County, 32% of children aged 2-4 years of age are considered overweight/obese, 43% of adolescence aged 5-19 are considered overweight/obese, and 66% of adults aged 20 years of age and older are considered overweight/obese. (http://www.dhcs.ca.gov) These numbers are some of the highest numbers in the state. It just so happens that Madera happens to have the lowest socioeconomic statuses in the state. Also, the HEAL Zone community has the lowest educational attainment level as well. In public health it has been shown that the lower your educational attainment, the lower your health statuses. These two statistics a lot of times go hand and hand.
My Job Description
My job working for Mr. Curley and Children’s Hospital Central California provided me with the opportunity to work hands on with the HEAL Zone Initiative. I have mostly gathered statistics, created marketing flyers, and put together resources to help the HEAL Zone Initiative. On top of the HEAL Zone work, my other job description involves any other administrative work that Tim requires like researching new health bills, hospital service area health statistics, and other paperwork.
Fieldwork Objectives
- 1. Inform, educate, and empower people about health issues. By the end of the Spring 2013 semester, I will have assisted in pre-implementation activities, including developing scripts for office visits and other needed forms for Children’s Hospital Central California
- I felt I got the chance to inform, educate, and empower people through the data I recovered and marketed. The strengths of this objective were I got to use my marketing skills to publicize information to other stakeholders and learn research skills on epidemiology statistics that are essential in this field. The weakness of the experience is I wish I worked more hands on in the hospital and worked on things that pertained more to the hospital itself like office visits.
- 2. Mobilize community partnerships and action to identify and solve health problems. By the end of the Spring 2013 semester, I will have taken a lead role in preparing a presentation for 100% of the key HEAL Zone stakeholders, including Madera County Board of Supervisors, Madera City Council, Madera Chamber of Commerce, and community based non-profits which will highlight HEAL’s successes.
- This objective was not met because Tim decided he didn’t need a presentation developed by me for the HEAL Zone stakeholders. I believe they decided they would just give audio presentations rather than visual. I participated in one presentation with Mr. Curley in front of the Madera City Council and there was no visual aspect of the presentation but only audio. The strengths were I got to focus more on research analysis and the weakness is I did not get to develop a professional presentation and a chance to show off my work to major stakeholders.
- 3. Link people to needed personal health services and assure the provision of health care when otherwise unavailable. By the end of the Spring 2013 semester, I will have assisted in the development of tools and promotional items that promote the partnership between Children’s Hospital Central California and local markets/convenience stores and residents.
- I have completed this objective by compiling a list of different resources the HEAL Zone can use as incentives for local small businesses to become a part of the initiative. The strengths of this experience is I learned about new things small businesses can manipulate to make themselves successful as well as political strategies used in order to bring other stakeholders to your initiative. The weaknesses were that there were not the best incentives for small commercialized businesses. I was set on finding nice grants from the government to help small businesses but then I saw that the government does not provide grants to commercialized businesses.
Public Health Competencies
I feel that this internship has greatly enhanced my public health competencies by showing me the administrative tasks of a program as well as community health skills. Tim has provided me skills in knowing how to combat health disparities in communities. This knowledge goes hand to hand with the administrative tasks in the hospital to develop political and financial support to develop a program to help the community. With working with the HEAL (Healthy Eating and Active Living) Zone Initiative, I got to see first-hand the political and financial factors that play into whether a program succeeds or not. Tim taught me that you should never create a program or expect to reach any goals by only going about something with one plan. There must be many plans set in stone in order to reach a goal and many different ways to combat a situation. With the HEAL Zone we knew that not only did we have to get the local convenience stores on board with the initiative but we had to convince the city council, Madera Unified, local community advocate leaders, churches, etc. The main thing a program needs is adequate funding to make a goal possible. This meant bringing community partners like Kaiser Permanente together on an initiative in order to receive funding. This brought in over a million dollars from just Kaiser Permanente and that is the major stepping stone in order to make a dream a reality.
I know that my epidemiology statistical research capabilities have greatly improved from this internship because of all the research I provided Mr. Curley. He showed me many ways to gather the statistics you need to open people’s eyes to a problem. Sometimes a problem is not apparent until it is put in front of a person eyes on paper. That is why it is very important to have the capabilities to gather essential data that can prove your point.
Work Space, Equipment, and Supervision
I was not provided work space at Children’s Hospital Central California for this internship nor was I provided any equipment to help me on my tasks. Mr. Curley seems to understand that sometimes the best work comes from individuals that are kept autonomous. I was not supervised and was kept autonomous in my duties. He kept a more task oriented relationship between him and I in which I based my own time off the honor code and he based his supervision on the work I provided. A task oriented relationship and honor code may not be the more efficient way of getting work, but it is highly effective for receiving high quality work. Tim also has trust in me and my abilities to get the job done which is why he hired me.
Academic Preparation for Internship
I felt my academic career has definitely prepared me for my internship. My major is Public Health Administration which pertained to most of the work I had done for this internship. I felt that the class that most prepared me for this internship was the Epidemiology of Public Health class taught my Dr. Krenz. She taught me the best ways to uncover useful information and statistics. Not to mention the ambition that California State University, Fresno had installed in me to want to thrive for this internship and the communicational skills taught to me by my professors and peers.
Overall Feelings
My overall feeling of my experience with working with Timothy Curley, Children’s Hospital Central California, and the other HEAL Zone members is has been very positive. I would not have replaced my experience with any other class. I felt that I learned more during this internship than any class at Fresno State could teach me. This internship has prepared me for the real world by incorporating my book knowledge with my other social capabilities and street smarts. Not only did I gain good knowledge in the field of public health, but I got a better sense of direction through working with Mr. Curley. He acted as a mentor by giving me valuable advice in my planning process for my future career. He told me his career stories and how it brought himself to where he is now. It was very rewarding to be given the opportunity to work with Mr. Curley because he provided me with the skills I need to succeed. He taught me the most important aspect of persuading a career is to have exceptional networking skills. The professional world is all about networking and in order to get anywhere with your profession, you must now someone. I feel that was the best advice anyone could give me and it came from someone that is living proof.
Suggestion of Future Placement
My advice to a student would depend. I would ask the student what he/she is trying to accomplish with his academic career. If he/she is like most of the students he/she just wants to get a piece of paper and has no sense of direction. Now if this person knows what they want to do in life, has ambition, and wants to learn, then I would recommend them to Timothy Curley. I would tell them that this internship is for those that have a sense of direction and want to gain the knowledge. I would recommend this internship if they don’t mind being punctual, giving an A+ effort, and doing all the work required. If they want to just sail on through their education by doing the minimal amount of work possible then I would just recommend taking another class with a teacher that has a good ratemyprofessor.com score.
References
Login