Emma Berwanger: Prytime Medical, Week Two

Monday

I moved offices because Emily, who is my new “boss”, came back from vacation, and I was stealing her office. She introduced me to the world of a start-up business, and the difference between this office and corporate life. I learned that in a start-up, you can’t have people that just do their job and don’t help anyone else. You need to have people that are invested in making the company succeed and will do anything to make that happen. We also talked about corporate structure in general, and corporate etiquette. The last half of my day was spent researching and reading published research papers. It’s a lot harder than one might think; I used PubMed, Cochran, and Google Scholar to find papers on REBOA being used to help/treat strokes.

Tuesday

Today was my shadowing day. I started off with huddle, and then I sat in on the Finance huddle with Gina. Gina is the CFO, and she showed me all of the spreadsheets that she has to keep track of customers, forecasts, accounting, etc. Let me tell you, I’ve never seen spreadsheets that huge and advanced. I then went on to talk to Dave Baer. He deals with data analysis, grants from the government, and producing new products. One of the interesting things I learned from him was that the government spends about 40 billion in biomedical research, and some of that money goes to new companies (like Prytime) who are trying to sell a device. Prytime submits a proposal to the government to get a grant, and if they get the grant, they just have to show that they used the money to develop and push the product into society.

I sat in on a little bit of a bank board meeting on which Mr. Spencer has a seat. We then went to lunch as a team because today was my fellow intern Mason’s last day, and I got Texas BBQ for the first time. It was amazing to put it in simple words.

I sat in with Morgan, who deals with the day-to -day finances and puts in product orders for the manufacturer. She showed me QuickBooks and what they use it for. She also pays bills and deals with invoices, as well as shipping the catheters.  The last thing on my to-do list was to sit in with Emily, who is the HR person in the company. She deals with recruiting, employee benefits, as well as training of new employees. We looked over some of the health insurance paperwork as the work day came to a close.

Wednesday

Huddle started off my day, and then I shadowed Emily and she showed me everything that she does on a day-to-day basis. She explained what Social Security is, a 401k, health insurance, and lots of other business-y stuff. She also kind of convinced me to go to law school and become a consultant of some sort and go into business rather than the medical field, which surprised me because I’ve never considered doing anything other than medicine. I think that’s why this internship is super unique and special to me, because it’s opening my eyes to so many opportunities.

I finished up reading some articles about aortic occlusion and strokes, and wrote up a few summaries to send over to Dave, so he could potentially use those articles as marketing help to customers. I followed up with the lady that I was going to write a story about, and started on my boaters safety course! We are going to the lake this weekend, and in order for me to ride a jet ski by myself I have to have this license. It only takes a few hours so Mr. Spencer allowed me to take some work time to do it, although I have been doing it at night before dinner as well.

Thursday

I got into the office and immediately started reworking my REBOA and stroke write up. I had sent the write up to a fellow intern named Nneoma, and she gave me some corrections that I fixed and sent to Dave. I sat in on huddle with Emily, and then I started working on a troubleshooting video for the STAAR. The STAAR is a dummy that is built to insert the catheter into, and I was making a video to post on the website. I filmed and edited the video that day.

Prytime currently has 2 other interns, and their internships ended today. They did a presentation about the things that had done and the things they had learned. We all had ice cream and cake after. It was really nice to get to see other things that people had learned, and it made me realize a lot of things I had learned, but just forgot to write down in my ongoing notes. It also made me realize things I did or didn’t want to do for my presentations in the future.

Friday

Today I got to leave work early because we were heading up to the lake house for the weekend! I sent out the video I had made to Julie in the morning, then (as always) sat in on huddle. Although this meeting everyday does seem redundant, it’s nice because I’m slowly starting to understand what everyone is doing and people’s roles at the company. An interesting thing about huddle that I realized was that everyone stands during the meeting, and it’s meant to signal that there is a time limit on the meeting (15 minutes). They don’t want the meeting take longer, that want it to be quick and short.

Emily and I met for an hour or two, and then I worked on drafting some letters that are sent out to hospitals. These letters tell the hospitals that the sales reps (who are demonstrating the product to the facility) have been drug tested, trained in the product, and have had a criminal background check. I organized some 401k files for her, and then I was off to the lake!

The Weekend

The Spencer’s have a lake house with a boat, jet skis, a diving board, and so so much more. I had so much fun that I’m trying to convince my parents to buy a boat now. I went rafting, jet skiing, and zup boarding. I’ve never really had a lake weekend, and so I didn’t know how much muscle you really use just to stay on the rafts and boats! It’s Monday and my neck still hurts from the raft.