Here are six pieces of advice for SPH students getting ready to graduate this year:
1) Stay open to possibilities: While in school, you are exposed to lots of subject areas through your class work and on-campus lectures. Stay open to the possibility of discovering a new area of interest - the more open-minded you are, the more job opportunities you'll find.
2) Do as many informational interviews as possible: The next six months are a great opportunity for you to network and learn from leaders in your interest area. Professionals are surprisingly happy to talk to students, so go out there and find out where the potential jobs are!
3) Hone your skills: Employers will be looking to see what you can contribute to the organization. Take time to learn new computer programs, get a certification in project management, etc. This won't take very much time, but will make you more marketable.
4) Take a class outside the school of public health: There are diminishing returns to taking a lot of classes in the same subject area. Go outside the SPH to learn about a different discipline's perspective.
5) Enjoy yourself: Spend time with other students and at on-campus events. You'll want to have lots of great memories of your time at Berkeley.
6) Take a break: Once you start working, it'll be hard to take a big chunk of time off. When you land a job, try to negotiate for starting well after graduation, and take some time to do something you've been dreaming about!
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
My Action Learning Project
For my action learning project, I’m working with Professor David Graves in the UC Berkeley Ambient Gas Plasma Lab.
The AGP lab is developing a small medical device that can be used to prevent infection and promote wound healing. Professor Graves has hired me to look into the business and operational aspects of launching this device in the developing world. This will include exploring issues like intellectual property strategy, production strategy, barriers to adoption by medical professionals. We hope to come up with as many ideas as possible to help in the implementation of this device.
The project is just beginning. The goal is to gather as much information as possible, through internet research, case studies, and interviews with people who are more experienced in this field. The more ideas we generate that can be used when the project is launched, the better.
I hope to learn more about all the aspects of launching a new health technology. I look forward to researching what has done in the past to help healthcare providers become comfortable using new devices. Through this project I will make contacts in the medical device/international health field, and hope to learn from my interviews with them.
There’s a lot to look forward to in this project. I like the freedom I have to explore whichever aspects of this project interest me, and I like being able to learn about many different aspects of launching a device in a developing country.
There are a lot of challenges, though. I’m very much on my own with this project – the professor has never done anything like this himself. It is up to me to structure my work, and to keep this as a priority.
At this stage in the project, my main questions are on how to go about finding the information I need, how to organize my progress, and how to make the most of my interviews. Any advice from the fellows community would be very much appreciated!
The AGP lab is developing a small medical device that can be used to prevent infection and promote wound healing. Professor Graves has hired me to look into the business and operational aspects of launching this device in the developing world. This will include exploring issues like intellectual property strategy, production strategy, barriers to adoption by medical professionals. We hope to come up with as many ideas as possible to help in the implementation of this device.
The project is just beginning. The goal is to gather as much information as possible, through internet research, case studies, and interviews with people who are more experienced in this field. The more ideas we generate that can be used when the project is launched, the better.
I hope to learn more about all the aspects of launching a new health technology. I look forward to researching what has done in the past to help healthcare providers become comfortable using new devices. Through this project I will make contacts in the medical device/international health field, and hope to learn from my interviews with them.
There’s a lot to look forward to in this project. I like the freedom I have to explore whichever aspects of this project interest me, and I like being able to learn about many different aspects of launching a device in a developing country.
There are a lot of challenges, though. I’m very much on my own with this project – the professor has never done anything like this himself. It is up to me to structure my work, and to keep this as a priority.
At this stage in the project, my main questions are on how to go about finding the information I need, how to organize my progress, and how to make the most of my interviews. Any advice from the fellows community would be very much appreciated!
Saturday, August 7, 2010
at the VA
Hi All,
Hope you're doing well! Happy to say that this summer has been pretty laid back with plenty of exploration.
When I first got to work, I was encouraged to visit/shadow all the departments in the hospital that I'm interested in. So, I've spent a day with an outreach team in their mobile health care van, gotten a tour of the pharmacy department and their pill-dispensing robots,etc, and talked to a lot of interesting people in general. I also got to participate in a three-day LEAN process improvement workshop.
I'm applying what I learned about LEAN to a project to improve the Occupational Therapy department's workspace. The OT department has stockpiled equipment (like raised toilet seats and scooters) in their workspace because they cannot depend on the Prosthetics department reliably delivering the equipment they need for patients. The result - the patient gym doubles as a warehouse - not ideal. So I'm teaming up with the OTs and the prosthetics department to improve the way equipment is requested and stored.
I'm also working on a project to rewrite the hospital's inter-facility transfer policy. Moving a patient from one hospital to another (for a needed procedure, or even just because of space issues) involves so many people and departments that it's just been a nice excuse for me to go out and meet people (and learn the lingo they use!)
Well, I'm looking forward to catching up with you all in person, enjoy your weekend,
Santhi
Hope you're doing well! Happy to say that this summer has been pretty laid back with plenty of exploration.
When I first got to work, I was encouraged to visit/shadow all the departments in the hospital that I'm interested in. So, I've spent a day with an outreach team in their mobile health care van, gotten a tour of the pharmacy department and their pill-dispensing robots,etc, and talked to a lot of interesting people in general. I also got to participate in a three-day LEAN process improvement workshop.
I'm applying what I learned about LEAN to a project to improve the Occupational Therapy department's workspace. The OT department has stockpiled equipment (like raised toilet seats and scooters) in their workspace because they cannot depend on the Prosthetics department reliably delivering the equipment they need for patients. The result - the patient gym doubles as a warehouse - not ideal. So I'm teaming up with the OTs and the prosthetics department to improve the way equipment is requested and stored.
I'm also working on a project to rewrite the hospital's inter-facility transfer policy. Moving a patient from one hospital to another (for a needed procedure, or even just because of space issues) involves so many people and departments that it's just been a nice excuse for me to go out and meet people (and learn the lingo they use!)
Well, I'm looking forward to catching up with you all in person, enjoy your weekend,
Santhi
Monday, May 17, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Decisions, Decisions...
I will be doing my internship at the VA hospital in Palo Alto. The VA is a good fit for me because two of my main health interests are mental health and disability, two areas in which the VA offers a lot of services, given its population's needs. I'll most likely be working on their "Patient and Family Centered Care" initiative. I'd like to see how the team I'm working with goes about changing the way clinicians relate to their patients.
While I'm there, I just want to get a good feel for the hospital environment. I want to make the time to interview and shadow people in as many departments and roles as possible and sit in a lot of meetings. If I do this, and if I make real contributions to the project, I'll consider it a successful summer.
Deciding what to do this summer was a challenge for me. I really had to think about what was important to me in a summer internship. Mentoring? Future job opportunities? Exposure to an industry in which I don't plan to work? Fun? Confronting trade-offs and making decisions under uncertainty is an important leadership ability to develop, and the internship process was great practice!
While I'm there, I just want to get a good feel for the hospital environment. I want to make the time to interview and shadow people in as many departments and roles as possible and sit in a lot of meetings. If I do this, and if I make real contributions to the project, I'll consider it a successful summer.
Deciding what to do this summer was a challenge for me. I really had to think about what was important to me in a summer internship. Mentoring? Future job opportunities? Exposure to an industry in which I don't plan to work? Fun? Confronting trade-offs and making decisions under uncertainty is an important leadership ability to develop, and the internship process was great practice!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
We like prevention......right?
Here's the story:
Project Prevention is an organization that pays an incentive of $300 to drug users to get sterilized or go on long-term birth control. The project was started by Barbara Harris, who adopted four babies from the same drug-addicted woman. After watching the newborns go through withdrawal after they were born, she decided to take action....and this is the action she chose to take.
Part of her rationale is that having unwanted, drug-exposed babies is harmful to a woman's self-esteem. Another part of it is that the children are a burden on the system - according to the the Project's website, 80% of newborns whose mothers are illicit drug users go straight from the hospital to foster care.
I think that because this is an extreme case, it forces us to confront all sorts of issues in public health ethics. Sure, this is cost-effective, but is it social engineering? And no doubt many women use the incentive money to pay for drugs. Is the incentive coercive, given their addiction and need for money? But what if it is true (as the organization claims) that this incentive is the "nudge" that people need to do something that they know is the right thing for themselves? And there are many more questions that a program like this raises.
If you want to learn more, google the organization - there are lots of opinions out there.
Controversial enough for you?
Project Prevention is an organization that pays an incentive of $300 to drug users to get sterilized or go on long-term birth control. The project was started by Barbara Harris, who adopted four babies from the same drug-addicted woman. After watching the newborns go through withdrawal after they were born, she decided to take action....and this is the action she chose to take.
Part of her rationale is that having unwanted, drug-exposed babies is harmful to a woman's self-esteem. Another part of it is that the children are a burden on the system - according to the the Project's website, 80% of newborns whose mothers are illicit drug users go straight from the hospital to foster care.
I think that because this is an extreme case, it forces us to confront all sorts of issues in public health ethics. Sure, this is cost-effective, but is it social engineering? And no doubt many women use the incentive money to pay for drugs. Is the incentive coercive, given their addiction and need for money? But what if it is true (as the organization claims) that this incentive is the "nudge" that people need to do something that they know is the right thing for themselves? And there are many more questions that a program like this raises.
If you want to learn more, google the organization - there are lots of opinions out there.
Controversial enough for you?
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