Phillip Catone took his knowledge and experience to leverage an internship at Mayo Clinic, following a path to continue growth or pivot into a career of project management.
Why did you choose this internship?
I have been in my current role at Mayo Clinic for about 10 years, and I felt like I was ready to expand or pivot to a new challenge. After chatting with Stephanie Springer from the PAH Internship Team, I was able to work with a supervisor at Mayo Clinic to create a personalized internship that would allow me to grow into the next potential role or move into a different direction.
What kind of work did you do during your internship experience?
Moving up to a senior role would require being involved in more complex analytics and system build, along with leading a team. There was an opportunity for me to join a project team with new development from our external vendor and complete build for regional infusion clinics in the Southeast Minnesota region. This was a lot of time spent with my teammates, the practices I was supporting and our vendor’s research and development (R&D) team. I was also leading part of the project planning portion and implementation timelines.
What is unique about your situation that influenced your internship selection or experience?
I work full-time and take courses full-time, so finding an internship, to be perfectly honest, was stressful and gave me anxiety. This experience gave me a chance to step into a different space where I already work, allowing me to continue to grow, expand my network, and learn more than I may have before. That was key for me; I thrive on learning new things.
How did your Applied Humanities major coursework help prepare you or give you unique insight for your expanded role?
I was able to apply material from a few classes in my experience. Learnings from the course PAH 372: Intercultural Competence came into mind quite a bit. I was working with two groups of people I don’t usually, nurses and Midwesterners. After taking PAH 372, I was able to step back and appreciate things from their two unique and different perspectives. For my project management side of the internship, PAH 420 (The Human Condition) gave me a good mindset for how to develop something for communities and interviewing with meaning.
What did you find most challenging about your internship?
Time management can always be hard, and it was no different here. Adding in the internship on top of my workload was daunting. I felt like I was doing more after my typical work hours and not feeling like I was recalling what I was supposed to be doing. I found using the Activity Tracker daily kept me on task, and I made use of the Planner function in Microsoft Teams to keep me organized as well. I organized my work into “buckets” and this also kept me more organized.
If you worked on a big project, describe it.
One of the main parts of my internship was presenting at our vendor’s annual conference for analysts. This was equally exciting and nerve racking. My coworker and I were chosen to present since we were experienced with the system build. While I did build for one region, my focus on the presentation was our implementation strategy, training, and how we worked with the nurses and our oncology cohorts. It took a lot of time to put together the presentation and make sure it was impactful and highlighted what we needed it to. We set up weekly meetings to build the presentation and practice it. We eventually traveled to Wisconsin and spent one day attending other sessions, and day two of supporting our other teammates. We presented towards the end of the day, and it went really well. It felt good to feel that sense of completion, and I had two people from other healthcare facilities approach me directly to ask additional questions and see if we could connect.
How has your internship experience influenced your plans for your future?
For about 8 years, I was a build analyst, doing a lot of system build for our scheduling end users. I thought this was perfect for me. During this internship I learned that I really enjoy working on development projects, and even more so on the project management and consulting side of things. I am excited that I had this opportunity to get outside of my comfort zone and learn that I like doing something different.