ACTIVITY SUMMARY

In the first 60 hours of my internship at the Virginia Beach Department of Public Health, I learned about many of their surveillance systems and how to operate them, such as ESSENCE, VOSS, and VEDSS. I have sat in on a few meetings at the organization going over position structures and organizational charts of staff. I received contact tracing training via the VDH website during my onboarding process.

The staff allowed me to sit in on multiple investigation calls and taught me the basics of conducting an investigation. In addition, I have been taught how to look up health records in the Virginia health records database with participating partners such as Sentara and CHKD. I have completed training modules on disaster preparedness. The staff printed me a sheet with the current listings of Virginia’s reportable disease list, which I am becoming familiar with. I was shown history and physical examination records of a patient with Salmonellosis. An epidemiologist had me highlight what sections I felt were important for case documentation and she went over with me what she agreed with and thought I nailed all the right areas.

I have learned about many diseases, mainly the more significant ones in the area. These diseases include salmonellosis, Neisseria meningitidis, campylobacteriosis, hepatitis A, B, and C, legionellosis, Lyme disease, pertussis, shigellosis, MRSA, streptococcus pneumoniae, streptococcus Group A, and varicella. I learned about My Meal Detective, a website that the public can use to report any meal that they ate at a restaurant that they believe made them sick. I also learned about how to look up restaurant health inspections in the database. I was also shown around the building and introduced to the different areas of the building, such as Environmental Health, WIC, laboratory, dental, and the clinic. We recently had a meeting about lead levels, exposure, and its prevalence. This was conducted by the environmental health staff. This meeting was informative and a refresher to my existing knowledge on the topic.

The last 60 hours of my internship at the Virginia Beach Department of Public Health, completed my 120 hours. I furthered my knowledge about many of their surveillance systems and had experiential use with them. I had the privilege of partaking in many meetings at the local, regional, and state level. One meeting was about epigenetics and serotypes and their importance in the laboratory at the health department.

A rather large food-borne illness outbreak occurred while I was present for my internship. It was isolated to a single event and the attendees and no one was hospitalized thankfully. This was a great learning experience. From this case I was able to learn about the investigation process, the proper methods and procedure of laboratory collection kits for specimen intake, initialize an outbreak ID, prepare a Redcap Survey, and procedures throughout the facility. In addition, I was able to perform calls to attendees to determine if they were present at the event and if they would not mind taking a survey to assist in our investigation. 

I was lucky to be given a few days of remote work training and learning activities. These included trainings on surveillance systems, numerous multi-drug resistance workshops, and information about Redcap Surveys. The multi-drug resistance trainings covered C. auris and CPO colonization, enhanced barrier precautions in nursing facilities, healthcare facility environment cleaning and disinfection, simplifying carbapenem resistant organisms, and outbreaks and water management programs in healthcare settings.

My final day was a busy one, I got to meet the Nurse Manager at the facility and the Environmental Health Manager.  We continued working on the foodborne illness outbreak and had a meeting with the environmental health team. I said my goodbyes and was able to confirm my MPH internship (APE) there as well for January.