Summer Medical Internships: Everything You Need to Know

Summer medical internships are a great way to gain real life experience in the medical field and not have to worry about attending classes and working at the same time. Most medical students like to be able to concentrate on their studies so when a medical internship is added into the mix, it may mean that their grades begin to suffer. That is why a summer internship is one of the most popular ways to still get in the great advantages of having done internships and still make sure that your grades are up to par.

There are a few different ways that person can obtain a summer medical internship. Most medical schools offer some sort of internal summer internship program that is available to their students. These may be research internship programs that are done with professors or scientist at the college or they may be done at the college's medical facilities and clinics. The other type of internship programs that most medical colleges offer are partnership programs with other medical organizations and hospitals. Some colleges will partner with the local hospital or medical center and will have their medical students placed in summer internships that are only available to that college's students. The nice thing about these internships is that they are less competitive since it is only one school competing for the summer internship.

The other way that a medical student can obtain a summer medical internship would be with their own research. There are hundreds of different medical organizations and hospitals and clinics that offer internship programs to medical students. The best way to find out what internship programs are available is to check out the organization's website or to call the human resources center to find out more. The downside to these types of summer internships is that they are much more competitive since medical students from all over will be applying for them, but usually there are plenty of different internships available in different aspects of medicine.

When you complete a summer medical internship there are a wide range of things to expect. There are so many different medical fields and categories and each one will have medical interns doing something different. There are some internships that are researched based and others that will have an intern dealing directly with patients. If you do apply for a summer internship that will have you working with patients, you need to realize that you may be held to the same standards as actual doctors. You need to have a professional appearance and attitude and need to be as helpful as possible. With this type of medical internship you may be taking vital signs of patients, prepping a patient for surgery, observing surgeries, taking a patient's medical history, and shadowing a resident doctor. If you choose a medical research internship, you may be working on case studies, doing laboratory work, or helping to pull medical charts.

If you are interested in summer medical internships, then you will first want to check with your medical college for any internships and then research private organizations that offer internship programs.

Here are three specific summer internships that can get you started:

The Coriell Institute for Medical Research offers a limited amount of internships for laboratories and offices throughout the institute. The summer internships are ten weeks long and are available to high school students as well.

John Hopkins has a wide variety of summer medical internships for just about every field of medicine. They have research internships as well as practical internships in which you will work directly with patients. They also have certain summer internship programs that are available to minorities or students who have financial needs.

Columbia University offers a summer research program that is open to sophomores, juniors and seniors in any 4-year college. You do not need to be a Columbia University student to apply for the Amgen Scholars Summer Research Program. The program is very competitive and allows students to work at Columbia University with the professors and scientist working on scientific research. It is a full time program so if you are going to be taking summer classes, you will not be able to participate in this summer program.

For more information on these summer medical internships, check out the following links:
http://www.coriell.org/index.php/content/view/67/125/
http://www.jhu.edu/careers/students/internships/internships.html
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/ug/amgen/