Reflection On Internship

855 Words2 Pages

Lauren Biddle
23 February 2013
HDFS 465
Reflection #1
Goals - My goals for my internship at the Rockford Center include: becoming more familiar with Social Workers in Rockford and also in other settings, learning how to interview patients on my own with confidence, learning how to execute the discharge process of patients independently without having to ask my supervisor for assistance, becoming more familiar with adolescents and being mindful of their feelings, being more patient with myself, learning how to create boundaries with patients and lastly being more assertive in the workplace. Since I am a visual learner, I believe that I can meet these goals by watching my supervisor when she interviews patients, when she takes notes during the interviews, as well as when she fills out the appropriate paperwork for each case. I also learn by simply doing tasks on my own as well. Thus, it is very useful for me when my supervisor tells me what she needs done and challenges me to remember the appropriate protocol for each task.
I know that some interns often encounter problems, small or large, during their internship so I am trying to avoid these as much as possible. As a student reflected in The Successful Internship, “As I listened to my classmates talk about their experiences, I felt my insecurities grow. It seemed that I was the only one in the group with any doubts about their internship and what was happening to it” (Sweitzer & King, 2014, p. 224). I can completely understand where this student is coming from as this type of experience has happened to me before, but I strive to do my best and challenge myself to reach my full potential in the workplace.
One challenge in goal setting would be to confuse a goal with an action step...

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...istrative portion of it either.
Likewise, I attend group therapy sessions every afternoon with my supervisor and my fellow intern. The patients that attend these group therapy sessions are adolescents who are between 13-17 years old. These patients typically describe their family life at home, the reason that they ended up at Rockford, and any other issues that they are comfortable discussing with the group. I also fill out a four page psych assessment for each patient that identifies the reason that they are there, family issues, history of sexual activity, mental illness (if applicable), medications taken, drugs taken in the past, sexual/physical abuse history, and any other relevant concerns stated by the patient. I have become well versed with “clinical language” in filling out these psych assessments and taking notes at meetings as well as throughout the day.

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