Pharmacy is a personal calling for Binghamton student tackling double internship

During the day, Xinyu (Reah) Jia helps pharmacists by making infusion bags for elderly patients recovering at home. Later, she performs clinical assessments for long-term care facility and specialty pharmacy patients.

In between, she pitches in with a team preparing to publish research linked to diabetes prevention. This is just a snapshot of Jia’s two 2023 summer internships, one a virtual research exchange with the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) and the other involving seven weeks at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, which showed her new facets of the complex work surrounding pharmaceuticals. It’s a profession she views as a personal calling.

“Growing up, I always felt such a strong empathy for people and helping people in general, especially when they’re hurt,” says Jia, a P3 (third-year) pharmacy student who initially set her sights on becoming a pathologist. “Before entering pharmacy school, I thought I was just going to learn about medicines, certainly not different disease states and how to treat them and manage them. This is such a large field, and I quickly became excited by all the career possibilities that came with it.”

A FAMILY TRADITION

Jia’s family is entrenched in the healthcare field, and while her parents now live in Florida, much of her extended family still lives in China, where she was born. They have inspired her since childhood to carry on that tradition.

Finding her own niche within the field is something Jia remains proud of. When she secured both internships for the summer, she eagerly embraced the challenge.

“There was definitely a worry that I was going to exhaust myself by taking on these competitive internships at once, but they were also willing to help me strike a balance in my schedule,” she says. “That made me even more determined to meet the challenge.”

Throughout her internship with AACP, Jia helped a team write the abstract for a research study to assess effective behavioral interventions for diabetes prevention and management among young adults. Their task was to review the data researchers had collected, write a discussion and outline the results while also creating tables and graphs to go along with it.

“This was such a great opportunity for me to learn how to be a better researcher and enhance my critical-thinking skills.”

If Jia had ever doubted her ability to juggle a wide variety of complex areas within her field, the seven weeks at Hackensack put it to rest.

She also gained her first experience in an HIV clinic by shadowing medical professionals there and consulting with patients about their medication-related questions. One of her most valuable experiences involved working with Project Heal, where she helped patients suffering from domestic violence.

Looking back, Jia says the internships taught her so many new skills that she “absorbed them all like a sponge” and helped narrow her interests toward a career in managed care after completing a residency program. None of it would have been possible if she hadn’t been willing to step outside her comfort zone.

She encourages fellow and future pharmacy students to do the same.