<p>hello everyone my name is Cole from the American Journal of healthc care strategy and here with me is Caroline Burns Caroline why don't you uh share a bit about yourself hi everyone my name is Caroline and I'm a recent graduate from the University of scren with my masters of healthc care administration and currently I am the administrative coordinator at the department of anesthesiologist here at neor Children's Hospital in the Delaware Valley appreciate you joining us today uh Caroline um so what made you choose the University of Scranton I you know we've had a few of the graduates come on it seems like it's a very popular choice yeah um I would say for one this the campus is just beyond beautiful the buildings and everything that's about you know the classrooms the professors everything is just really welcoming and it made me feel comfortable um another thing about it was the health administration program was phenomenal a lot of the professors were recent CEOs um worked in Healthcare Systems so they brought to the table a lot of knowledge so it was a really robust program and one of the great things that they talked like that they did for the students was the um accelerated master's program which was um for five years so ultimately some of us ended up taking some Master's courses during our um senior of undergraduate and that was just really beneficial to wanting to get out into the real world postgraduate nice because I have noticed a lot of I think uh Scarlet was on and then I've also been talking with Jimmy and then they both were in undergrad and then they went straight to the grad program there so that's really nice I saw that you had internships as well I know there was that one internship an administrative internship kind of earlier on before you got to your fellowship what um made you want to take that internship so really that's one of the biggest things that's great about the program and the structure of the health admin Department um that internship was actually a requirement in order to pass the course so luckily since we have connections with the guisinger health system we essentially were able to get placed in an area that we wanted to complete so it was about 120 hours and it was a really it was unfortunately during covid for my time but I was with the director of Rehabilitation Services who was phenomenal she was a great woman leader and she just taught me a lot of different leadership skills and was really one of the reasons why I kind of got into the interest of quality just kind of watching some of the projects that she worked on the people that she spoke with um so it was really one of those great experiences to kind of get me exposed earlier on in my career to certain things in the healthcare world and so you clearly developed a lot of skills during that as well because not only did you go on to do the administrative you know Fellowship but also kind of quickly either in the middle or directly after the end of that they brought you on fulltime right yeah at neor they did um which was honestly I was so thankful for I really wanted to stay at this hospital um the health system is just great and everyone that I have worked with with with my internship or my residency I shall say and then transitioning into this Ro new role it was a lot of the same people that I had already worked with so it was really just an easy transition for me to stay connected with everyone that's really really nice um I noticed earlier in your career as well you were a pharmacy technician and so I'm kind of interested because I think there was one or two other people who we've interviewed who or who were interviewing who were also pharmacy technicians but most people did things like scribing or other things I think pharmacy technician is one of the more unique ones um what skills did you learn or what interest you I think you were there for about a year right I was there for about a year and actually I kind of got that that role somewhat from Scarlet since she was also a pharmac technician there so his name is Tom dicho it's an independent Pharmacy in SC and he is really involved in trying to take students on to like learn new skills so it was a great way to transition into some realm of healthare without being in the hospital so one of the like biggest things like that I've learned through that was how Insurance works and how tedious and difficult it can be for patients who have probably no idea so you know in some situations it was really difficult to see patients struggle to try and get certain medications so you just learn to be on the people side of things and be helping the pa the patient with everything that goes on I would say also Tom is really big into Community Development stuff so as an owner instead of focusing on you know how much money can he make he was really focused on how his patients were getting the care that they needed so he developed a lot of different implementation systems to make sure that you know the elderly population in scrit was getting their medications so he really was he taught me how to be like a great leader in healthc care and how you always want to put your patients first I had a similar um kind of start that got me interested in the administration side was also with insurance um and their medications probably not as uh in-depth as yours was at the pharmacy but I was in neurology and patients couldn't get epileptic medications and they were having seizures and so yeah I'm sure you've probably seen a lot of similar experiences at the pharmacy side yeah of course and it was just some things were just really disheartening yeah it's can be really disturbing to see what do you feel like in your mha program and in undergrad as well as well throughout the internships and the administrative residency that you're prepared kind of as the Next Generation that they've prepared you to kind of solve some of these issues yeah I would say so I would think a lot of the courses that I had in undergraduate and in graduate were really relatable to real life situation so a lot about the quality you know how to be a leader and a lot of the other things were like the basic things like Excel which is really big that you want to know how to do you know making a presentation look well received and how you can get people's attention to do to get what you want to get your point across in nice yeah those are very I think useful useful skills um so I guess one of the kind of the questions that I have is coming out of this as a candidate you know sometimes employers struggle to attract top mha grads from programs like the one that you're in um and of course new Moors has you know you really enjoyed working for them so what made you choose new Moors for your uh residency so PRI when we had to find out where we wanted to go to residencies I kind of wanted to go the direction that we didn't really have a connection with and being from um the state of Delaware I knew of neor and I really wanted to be in the pediatric hospital setting just because I felt like that was the direction that would be beneficial for what I wanted to do and you know neor is a great institution they're nationally known and they just have really good values when it comes to delivering their care you know one of their mission is well beyond medicine and that stays true to the values that I hold that you know we always want to put the patient first and um deliver the highest quality of care they are really focused on their employees and their well-being you know that work life balance is a really key thing that they put into their system you know for example we have um we're offered the free gym here to go and work out if we want to during lunch there's classes that they offer but other than that they just everyone here that works is very connected until like you know everyone has that same mindset that we're putting pediatric Patients First and that anything we do they're the Forefront of our thought that's really really nice um I actually wanted to ask as well because we've seen so many great students coming out of scanton you know geographically it's a bit more of a rural uh school right yeah it's pretty up north in the middle of nowhere yeah right right and I think what's interesting about it is you know we've seen that kind of immediately after grad graduation the salary outcomes were a bit lower but the uh amount that had gotten into residencies and fellowships was way higher than some of the other programs I wanted to ask you know with this really great Alumni network going into these residencies do you ever find yourself collaborating or asking for you know kind of tips and advice from some of the residents who are spread across the region yeah I would say that with the mha program at Scranton since it's a smaller group of kids since the class sizes are OB a little bit smaller we all developed like really great relationships with each other so a lot of them are my closest friends still so during The Residency we were able to connect and you know talk about things talk about projects you know bounce ideas off of each other and kind of understand like you know maybe I'm not sure how to do something in Excel but someone I know in my program is really good at doing it so they were such a like a help it was helpful to have them around what advice do you think You' give someone who's maybe an undergrad or maybe out a high school that is looking for one of these mha programs you know since you've had such great success in yours what are some things that they should be looking out for to try to find an mha program like yours I would say you know some I know some schools have undergraduate mha but they might not have such a robust you know mha program for graduate um so I would say look into the programs that you know offer the admin residency or admin Fellowship route I think that's the biggest thing is it's kind of a transition into helping you find a job you know scant has a lot of success rate with students getting placed after they complete The Residency or the fellowship and then I would also have them say to like really study like the courses and the professors that they have there I think you know the professors play such a big role in like helping with the networking the connections that they might have um and let alone the courses you really want to have courses that have you learned so many different real life situations how you can handle those things in the real world when you look at mha and what you can do with a health admin degree I think a lot of people gravit gravitate towards that just being like working in a hospital when there are a ton of opportunities in healthcare that you can get involved in so I would just suggest that for anyone that's in this type of program not to just think about that they only have to be in the hospital you know get different experiences and different Realms of healthare and wherever you end up going just go for the different opportunities that you don't think you'll like because in the end you might end up liking something that you didn't think you would and that just leads to better you know you can talk about different things in interviews you can have a better understanding of how different things work so I think that would be like main point what are some examples of that that you've seen that have kind of inspired you so with my residency I you know I didn't think um doing like some of my project work I would be really interested in it for example um there was just a lot of like some projects that I wanted to get into um but I wasn't sure if like I would be you know my knowledge would be an asset to that group of people because I wasn't sure if I would understand you know I did some things that were more clinical side so I could understand the inner workings of the clinical work that goes into how admin administrators make those decisions so I think that was like one of the bigger things was you know getting involved with clinical work as though it might be you know a scary thing to get involved with doctors and you know nurses understanding that they might have a different point of view and that's always better when it comes to making decisions so kind of putting yourself out there as a big one yeah yeah how early is you know I guess one of the things I'm wondering is how early did you start putting yourself out there like I've worried myself kind of like what you were saying is do I have enough knowledge to contribute or am I going to be a burden to these people you know you you never want to feel like you're um weighing you know slowing the team down but how early did you start putting yourself out there and and kind of getting exposure to some of these professionals um I would say I was a little like standoffish in the first like month of my residency because I didn't want to come in here full force you know acting like that I knew everything in the world so I kind of stood back but my preceptor was really like he really wanted me to get involved in these different things and I am really grateful that he did let me you know speak to different people and I think once I was comfortable with understanding what their background was and then understanding what my background could add to that it was really just an easy ride from there nice so a big key to it is having these good preceptors and yeah you know you want to find people that want to help you I've talked to a few students at some lesser known programs and they've had the hard time making connections with industry professionals do you have any tips for people who might be from lesser known programs or people like myself I'm from a school without an mha program what tips do you have for kind of making that connection to people who might be outside your kind of uh your neighborhood uh if if you know what I mean I think you know I think it would be you just have to have that mentality that if you want something you go for it so if there's certain people on LinkedIn that have like this fantastic role and something that you're really interested in in just shoot them the message you know the the least they can't do is not answer you but you know a lot of people are really receptive on LinkedIn and they really want to make those connections and they want to see these kids come out of programs and come into the workforce I think everyone has the same ideas they want everyone to just you know feel welcome to wherever they start their first job it's really nice um I appreciate that advice I think and then with that kind of backing from your education and your your residency what are you looking to do longterm where do you see yourself in you know 10 or 20 years yeah I really want to be involved in some type of project management and quality I think that's like the direction that you know quite a few people want to go towards but I just have such an interest in getting involved with projects that add a like add positive value and change the organization and ultimately create better systems I really appreciate that I I uh been passionate about that myself that's what also started me getting into this to be able to see something go from you know struggling and then you come in and you're able to really help people and it helps the employees it helps the patients it's it's really nice to see yeah well thank you so much Caroline for joining us today I really appreciate your time and I hope that we'll probably be speaking with you again uh in the future about your role in the work that you're doing at newms and Beyond so I really appreciate it yeah thank you so much Cole thank you</p>