When we arrived, we were greeted by ENS Draude who took us to a room where LCDR Skip Payne presented to us about the US Public Health Service. He shared his story about how he became an epidemiologist and told us that we can try to plan our future, but it often changes spontaneously. LCDR Payne gave us insight on the JRCOSTEP and Senior COSTEP internship opportunities through the USPHS. The JRCOSTEP is paid internships that last from 30 days to 4 months where you can choose from clinical or administrative health fields. The Senior COSTEP is an internship with an 18 month obligation to the USPHS. To find out more information about the internships you can see the student opportunities and training tab at USPHS.gov.
Next we heard from CAPT Robert Tosatto about the Division of the Civilian Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps (DCVMRC). CAPT Tosatto told us about how he started off with 42 MRC units nationwide and nearly 10 years later, the number of MRC units have almost reached to 1,000 units! He told us that MRC is about the hands in and not asking hands out- that the MRC is there to help other partners not other partners give to the MRC.
We got the pleasure to meet Retired Acting Surgeon General, RADM Kennith P. Moritsugu, who was a very humble and personable inspiration. He sat and talked a bit about his experiences as a former Acting Surgeon General, being fortunate with the experiences of being in both democratic and republican administration during the 10 years he was in office. He listened to our dreams and ambitions and personalized feedback to each of the interns by advice about advancing our futures. The most important advice he gave us was how we need to gather our information and "connecting the dots" in figuring out our future goals. He also shared that prevention isn't just about preventing disease, but that there are three stages of prevention; Primary, Secondary and Tertiary (Primary is preventing the disease from happening, Secondary is prevent further spread of disease with a person who already had the disease and Tertiary is preventing the long term complications). RADM Moritsugu continued to then share his experience as being the chairman of the diabetes institute for Johnson and Johnson, an inspiration from being a diabetic himself. He said the most important concept of health care is health literacy. He gave the example of how 23 million people have diabetes and 75 million have pre-diabetes and many people cannot understand what the means... and then simplified that 1 in every 3 people have diabetes. Health literacy is about making it understandable to the general public, not using health jargon that only makes you sound intelligent. This only causes three fingers to point back at you when blaming the person for not understanding you. When it was time for him to leave, he showed humility by holding the door for us as we walked into the lobby to take a photo.
We then proceed to a Thai restaurant where we celebrated one of the members, Dagayla Burks, who just received her master's! Congrats!
After lunch we heard from CDR Patrick Denis, an accountant, then a nurse and finally deputy Director for Training and Support Services in the Division of the Civilian Volunteer Medical Reserve Corps. He taught us the importance of "sniffing" those you meet, to help you get a feel of how other people think and can help you succeed.
Today was a great day and we look forward to the excitement of the rest of the week! :)
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