Name: Jerlin Perez
Class Year: 2023
Major: Biology
Hometown: Houston, Texas
Internship Organization: Legacy Community Health
Job Title: Health Advocate
Location: Houston, Texas
Award: Â鶹AV Internship Fund
What’s happening at your internship?
I am working at a nonprofit clinic that helps low-income families receive health care. Legacy offers high quality healthcare to everyone at Legacy regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. We screen patients each day with a survey that helps us see if they screen positive for needing help. Aside from providing healthcare we provide help with food, utilities, and financial help. We connect patients to resources and programs that provide such help. We continue to follow up with them each seven to ten days to make sure they are in a good situation and are receiving help. Legacy helps patients every step of the way from receiving eligibility for healthcare to helping patients fill out their snap applications.
Why did you apply for this internship?
Growing up, my family and I were never financially stable enough to have healthcare. My siblings and I grew up relying on homemade medicine and prayer each time any of us got sick. Even in emergencies we stayed strong because the hospital or seeing a doctor wasn’t an option. However, in 2016, my mother got connected to a nonprofit clinic that provided healthcare for anyone in need no matter what background, race or ability to pay. This clinic is now the clinic I am working for this summer. When I found out they had an internship I jumped to the opportunity and applied. I wanted to be able to help patients get the help that my family and I received when we most needed it. This internship was also a great opportunity for me to get a deeper look on how healthcare works and understand the healthcare system. It will be a huge help and extra knowledge I can have during my pre-med path.
What is something you have learned from your internship that you didn’t expect?
I came into this internship with the hope of gaming knowledge on healthcare and gaining experience in a clinic setting. However I have gained so much more than just knowledge for my pre-med path. Something that I have learned is that I have a huge leader inside of me. With this internship your leadership skills are put to a test. You have to lead a shift and organize everyone around the patient's appointment time. Usually I am a team member and never take the leader role since in my opinion it can be very pressuring and intimidating. I learned that I have everything that I need to take on a leadership role. I have learned many more tips on how to get out of my comfort zone.
Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?
Many of the skills that I am learning are very important for the pre-med path I am on. Being a pre-med student isn’t easy and there are skills one needs in order to succeed. Many of the skills I have learned here I will need for my pre-med route. The skills I have gained are leadership, organization, time management, and patient-interaction skills. Patient interaction is one of the most essential skills I have learned in this internship. Knowing how to speak to patients and what to say in certain situations is very important to understand as a medical student.
Second, organizing patients' medical charts is one of the things I have to do in order to know which patients we are screening on a certain day. Working from home was a big challenge but one of the hardest parts of it was to stay organized with my agenda and follow up with patients each seven to ten days. Working from home also helped me improve my time management skills, since I was on my own time I had to create an agenda on what had to be done throughout the day. This internship made me work on these certain skills more deeply than I ever did in the past. College gives you these skills but you improve on them at your own pace. This internship pushed me to improve and have them faster than I expected, which is really beneficial to me since I feel like I need them to keep going in this pre-med path that I am enduring.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.