BEVERLY, Mass. –Healthcare workers have never played a more important role in our society than they do right now amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID has put forth endless obstacles in front of all of us, it has also created some unique learning opportunities for those interested in the medical field.
Sophomore engineering major and Gulls’ volleyball student-athlete Gabe DeBenedetto (Rockford, Ill.) recently completed his first internship during the pandemic, at a hospital. DeBenedetto spent the summer interning at the Swedish American Hospital, in his hometown, getting hands-on experience in a field that has always fascinated him.
DeBenedetto was able to intern in the biomedical department of the hospital. Biomed refers to the department that services on and maintains medical equipment throughout the entire hospital. People who work in biomed work directly with equipment that is responsible for determining a patient’s condition and delivering appropriate treatments for them. Here, DeBenedetto got to work with medical equipment that he may design someday and learned how physicians use the instruments. He also got to see every part of the hospital by making trips to damaged equipment because most of the equipment that he worked with was too large to move, so he got to explore the departments that the devices were in.
Most of the time, DeBenedetto’s supervisors showed him what was wrong with a given piece of equipment and let him aid in fixing it. Sometimes, however, DeBenedetto got to troubleshoot the issue himself if others did not know what was wrong with the equipment immediately.
“I learned two really important things: first, being what it would be like to work in a hospital and, secondly, the composition of a variety of medical technology,” DeBenedetto said of his experience at the hospital.
A CHANGE OF HEART, SORT OF…
Based on his passion for engineering and for the medical field, DeBenedetto essentially knew he had two career path options entering his internship last summer. He could either pursue working outside of a hospital setting to design medical equipment, which he would want to do with prostheses, or he could go to medical school and work in a hospital.
DeBenedetto found that working with local biomedical technicians in his hometown gave him a better idea of both of these options and what they entail.
However, DeBenedetto didn’t realize a third option would present itself during his internship. Oddly enough, one that has always intrigued him from a young age.
On the first day of his internship, DeBenedetto got to go into the catheterization lab, also known as the cath lab, to work on defibrillators and learn what each piece of equipment does. A catheterization lab is an examination room in a hospital with diagnostic imaging equipment used to visualize the arteries and chambers of the heart and treat any abnormality found.
“I got the same indescribable feeling I got when first learning about the heart,” said DeBenedetto. “Ever since I learned the anatomy of the cardiovascular system my freshman year of high school I have been interested in being a cardiologist.”
At one point during his internship, DeBenedetto got to sit in the cath lab and observe a cardiologist perform a catheterization. Here, a catheter was inserted into the patient and threaded through the blood vessels to the heart to diagnose and treat their condition.
“I saw a live image of the heart beating and I got that amazing feeling about it,” said DeBenedetto.
With DeBenedetto’s passion for the human heart reinvigorated, he is now interested, more than ever, in taking the path of going to medical school to become a cardiologist.
What he would otherwise want to do as a biomedical engineer, as in designing equipment, does not give him that rush or create the passion he felt when he saw the live image of a heart beating. DeBenedetto also realized, through his internship, how much he loves the hospital environment and would prefer to work in such a setting as opposed to a manufacturing factory.
After a couple months of speaking to countless doctors and walking around a hospital and getting a unique understanding for what happens on a daily basis, it wasn’t difficult for him to come to the conclusion that he has a good idea of what he wants to do when he graduates from Endicott.
“Medical school is my preferred route post-graduation,” said DeBenedetto. “However, there are MD-PhD programs – where you become a licensed physician – that focus on research in the medical field.”
DeBenedetto said that he feels that is a good combination of both engineering and medicine that he may be interested in, too.
INTERNING DURING A PANDEMIC
Interning at a hospital during a pandemic is, one, an interesting story to share with others, and two, it allowed DeBenedetto the ability to work in one of the darkest periods of time in the medical field. While all COVID patients at the hospital were on their own floor, there was a different feeling than there would have been otherwise.
At one point, DeBenedetto got to go with his supervisor to the COVID floor of the hospital to go fix a piece of equipment. His supervisor told him that he didn’t have to go if he didn’t feel comfortable, but he did anyway. He wasn’t afraid of being put at a higher risk of contracting the virus, knowing all of the hospital staff is good about wearing personal protective equipment and keeping everything sanitized.
DeBenedetto’s first internship as a college student was a memorable experience for many reasons. It helped him narrow down what he wants to do in the near future, it solidified his love for medicine, and also gave him unprecedented access to the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
During their first internship, some Endicott students find that they aren’t as passionate about their major and their original career aspirations as they thought they were. This is a huge advantage, allowing them to discover exactly what they want to do with their lives.
In DeBenedetto’s case, however, his first internship made him realize that medicine is the field he is meant to be in. COVID and the year 2020, in general, have tested the strength of all of us, but, somehow, DeBenedetto came away with a positive experience from it all and hopes to make a difference in the world just like so many of his healthcare counterparts are doing right now.
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