Reflection 1 Hi everyone.

My name is Sheaffeel Gedeon and I am a current senior double

majoring in Kinesiology and Biology on the Pre-Physician’s Assistant track with a
minor in Leadership Studies. For my internship this summer, I am interning for Trine
Healthcare. Trine Healthcare is an organization that works to provide residents with
specific services to gaining better lives. The services range from assistance with
finances, appointments, and other needs to services geared towards exercise and
healthcare education. There are a variety of resident programs such as wellness
checks, on-site screenings and vaccination clinics, technology training, chronic
condiiton education, and more. Trine Healthcare is working directly with Charles
Place Apartments which is an assisted living building located in Providence, Rhode
Island.

Natasha Perez is the owner and creator of Trine Healthcare as well as who I am
interning for. Her title is CEO of Trine Healthcare. Natasha studied at San Diego
State University with a degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management. Even though
Natasha initially studied to be in hotel sales, she started gaining an interest in
healthcare through encounters that she had. With that, she gained experience through
various jobs, trainings, outside research, and more. Through these, Natasha found a
passion for working in healthcare. After taking a risk to move to the east coast, she
started Trine Healthcare and has been working to expand and grow the company ever
since regardless of the struggles, challenges, and issues that she had. Natasha first
introduced Trine Healthcare to the Charles Place Apartments in August 2020, and
has been working closely with this building and residents ever since.

As an intern at Trine Healthcare, I have been of assistance in a variety of services

along with constantly learning new things and developing new skills. Being that I am
known as Kinesiology interns, the main focuses are geared towards increasing
participation in exercise, promoting healthcare education, and encouraging better
health. The responsibilities that I have as an intern is taking vitals for the residents
that are part of our program, conducting exercise sessions whether it being group or
one on one, creating and presenting seminars on different health topics, and just
helping wherever and whenever necessary. As this organization is consistently
growing and changing to meet the needs and have the biggest impact on the
residents, I have constantly been working directly with Natasha and the other interns
to come up with new ideas to reach these goals. These include more social events
following the restrictions and rules of COVID while also building connections with
residents to increase participation and gain trust.

The past few weeks being an intern for Trine Healthcare and working at Charles
Place Apartments, I have learned a variety of skills such as practicing taking vitals
and recognizing warning signs and being cautious of normal and abnormal levels.
I’ve also been working one on one with residents encouraging them to exercise more
while also conducting exercise sessions. I’ve definitely enjoy myself working with
Natasha and these residents, and I’ve grown to love many of them for the small
amount of time I’ve been there.

Reflection 2 The first couple of weeks as an intern for Trine Healthcare has definitely a bigger
learning experience that I assumed. Working directly with the residents has allowed
me to enhance a variety of skills that I know for a fact will benefit me in future
 positions in healthcare. One of the main things that I like about this internship is that
since it’s such a small company, I am able to work more directly with the residents
and clients since there’s not many of them within the program itself. With that, it
allows me to focus more on each of their goals, health concerns, and health issues in
order to tailor exercise programs specific to each of them. One specific resident that
I’m working with has issues in regards to obesity and heart conditions. As we talked
about their goals, there is more of a focus on cardio and endurance to work towards
weight loss and better heart functioning with minor focuses on muscular strength and
flexibility.

Although this is only one of the experiences that I’ve had working with clients in
regards to exercise prescription it has allowed me to learn how to communicate and
work with a population I’ve never worked with as well as improve my adaptability
and overall professional skills. I have also been able to use many of the concepts that
I’ve learned in many of my KIN classes related to exercise prescription as a whole
such as progression, considerations, and more.

As we focus on exercise, we also focus on healthcare education to strive for

improved physical, mental, and social wellness of the residents. We do this mainly
through weekly seminars on different topics related to health. February seminars
talked about brain health with areas on dementia, Alzheimer's disease, memory loss,
and brain health overall. Through presentating, I ‘ve been able to educate the
residents on conditions that they may or may not experience themselves just to make
them more aware of warning signs, symptoms, and healthy or common treatment
methods. We also try to include things that help alleviate symptoms or help with
these conditions along with how they can be a support system to others that have
been diagnosed or are experiencing these. I’ve been able to expand my knowledge
with these presentations while educating others.

Reflecton 3 As time goes on, I’ve started learning so much more and doing more and more every
single week interning for Trine Healthcare. As I constantly take vitals for the
residents everyday that I’m here, I’ve been learning how to be more cautious of each
resident’s records. For example, some residents have high blood pressures and sugar
levels but that’s normal for them given their health conditions. I’ve also been able to
recognize when vitals were off and may be concerning. When this occurs, I usually
notify Natasha so that their doctors could be contacted to be safe. We all do wellness
check-ins each day we’re here to see how each resident that comes in is doing, so
I’ve been able to learn so much more about each resident slowly in regards to their
conditions and even personal life and issues. Based on the issue, many of the times
we help them out.

Moving out of February and into March, we’ve moved away from brain health and
moved into smoking and lung diseases. Many of the residents smoke along with the
serious health conditions they have which doesn't help their conditions or overall
wellness, so we are working to educate them on the harmful and long term effects
that comes with smoking in order to persuade them to stop or help others quit if they
don’t smoke themselves. It also allows them to be more aware of the changes that are
going on in their body to move towards a more healthy way of life such as being
more active, having a better diet, and taking care of themselves mentally.
 Due to COVID, many of the residents have been locked up in their rooms to keep
themselves safe. Because of the fact that many things are also being regulated or
closed because of the pandemic, they haven’t been able to go out as much or enjoy
things like they used to. As a result of that, I’ve been working to implement more
COVID regulated social events in order to get them out of their rooms but still in a
safe space in their buildings. The first social event that we had was bingo, and the
turn out was really good. We made a sign up sheet to regulate the amount of people
that came, and it was just a way for the residents to have fun and take time out of
their rooms for a little bit. Many of the residents ended up loving it and actually want
us to do another one soon. We plan to do a Wheel of Fortune type of event next.

Trine Healthcare also hosted COVID vaccine clinics in February for the first dose
and the beginning of March for the second dose. As the interns, we helped out by
assisting residents with their paperwork, and working to make the clinic go by as
smoothly and organized as possible since so many people were signed up.

Reflection 4 The past couple of weeks have definitely started to slow down in terms of traffic that
comes into the wellness center mainly because of the fact that the weather is starting
to get a little nicer outside. With that, more people are spending more time outside
and not really stopping by as frequently as before. We still have our regular clients
that come in everyday, but there are some days where we only see like 3 or 4 people
compared to like the 10 we usually see. We’ve still been doing the same things in
terms of taking vitals, prescribing and encouraging exercise, and just coming up with
events and being there as a support system for the residents. As said before, our main
goals are focusing and improving the health and wellness of the residents.

One thing that we’ve noticed is that a couple of the residents that we’ve been
working with have been more motivated to work out on a consistent basis on the
days that we’re here. Usually we are the ones who encourage them to work out, but
lately it’s been them coming to us to ask what time we’re working out with them. I
believe that they’re slowly falling into a routine in terms of exercising. We also have
been working on care plans for the residents. These are logs in an online system we
use called “AL Advantage” that tracks each resident’s progress, vitals, and overall
condition almost everyday. Our supervisor Natasha first created and wrote these
plans last August when she first introduced and started her organization at Charles
Place, and now we’ve been going through them to update them for her. Each care
plan focuses on the goals that the clients created with Natasha at the beginning. Our
job is to go over the goals with them and log their progress from then till now. We
also reflect on each goal, and see if any revisions or changing should be made or if
new goals or plans should be added.

Each week we’ve also been working to implement more social events every
Wednesday with COVID restrictions. From that, we’ve had more people come out of
their rooms and hang down here as time goes on. It’s nice for us to see people come
out of their rooms since many of them have been so bored and sad being locked up
in their rooms. These social events and just us being here and talking to the residents
each day we’re here have definitely had positive impacts on their social and mental
wellness.

Reflection 5 These past weeks have still been about the same in terms of traffic of the residents
that have been coming in the wellness center. We have our same people that schedule
one-on-one exercise sessions still come down, and I can proudly say that they are
doing very well and making some great changes in terms of their health and lifestyle.
One of the residents specifically has actually told me that exercising has helped him
so much in terms of letting out his stress and anger given that he’s been having some
personal issues. He’s been putting his energy into exercise about 30 minutes a day
while also challenging himself in these exercises. It’s nice to see how our
encouragement and support has had an impact on a few of these residents related to
making positive changes to their health and lifestyles. We’re slowly helping them fall
out of these bad habits and into good ones.

While we are constantly working with these individuals with exercise participation
and wellness, we have been using our seminars as well to increase healthcare
education. This month’s focus was on smoking such as smoking cessation, lung
diseases, and the financial costs that come with smoking. Through these seminars we
have worked to show the harms and complications that come from smoking tobacco
as well as certain diseases and conditions that come from it. Our goal is to show
these residents hwo smoking can lower their quality of life as well as decrease the lie
they live. There are so many smokers that live here so we hope to persuade them to
move towards quitting so they can reach better health.

This past week we also had another COVID vaccine clinic for second doses of the
vaccine. Through that, I was actually able to get my first dose of the vaccine through
this company. It’s nice to see how many of the residents are doing what’s better for
them in terms of keeping themselves safe and out of risk from the virus as they are
one of the biggest groups who are at risk.

Every week I feel as though I’m learning more and more through this internship, and
constantly growing as both a person and an individual. I’m advancing in my
healthcare skills as well as my adaptability and communication skills working with
this group. I’ve learned that working with seniors is way tougher than it seems, but
as time has gone on I’ve practiced the steps to take in order to gain trust and work
well with them. Many of them know that we are here for their overall wellness and
want to work with them to push towards better health and a better life. There have
been challenges here and there, but nothing that we haven’t been able to work with
and handle. As I’m learning so much about myself, about these residents, and more
and more about healthcare, I’m also learning so much from my supervisor and the
other interns as we all have different ways of doing things and leading. I am certain
this experience will give me some of the skills for me to be an efficient and great
Physician’s Assistant in the near future.