TDH Internship Reflection

I love the team of people I work with at the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH). The TDH is a friendly environment and everyone is very helpful. The benefit of interning at the Tennessee Department of Health is that my learning curve is exponential. I have the ability to see many aspects of Tennessee’s health plans, grants, and major issues. I have learned about the facets of TDH and what a career would be like in public health. These two things cannot be taught in a classroom; it requires real world experience. I have grown in many ways from my internship with TDH. I have grown my technical, communication, and interpersonal skills by being exposed to real word public health issues. I have also grown professionally through building a strong, professional network with fellow TDH employees and interns from offices all over the state. Networking is a skill that takes time to develop and my …show more content…
I learned to take on those attributes that I felt work best and used them in my day to day work with the Department of Health. The attributes that stood out the most were communication, behavior, and office etiquette. This prevented me from making mistakes and asking a lot of common sense questions. The TDH internship gave me the opportunity to test out skills I developed in my HCAP courses to see how they work in the real world professional setting. Applying these skills gave me an idea of my biggest strengths and areas of improvement. The Tennessee Department of Health internship allowed me to gain and learn new skills. For example, I learned a new software programs called RedCap, leadership techniques, data control, document merge, mail merge, and more. I have figured out through my matriculation through college that learning never stops, and it’s great to start adding to my skills inventory