An internship is one of the best ways to gather experiences before approaching a job. International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (Icddr,b) offers internship opportunities that are extremely beneficial for the freshers to start their public health career. Adiba Iqbal, who was the intern of Dr. Kamrun N. Koly at icddr,b, shared her experiences on how this internship opportunity helped her developing different skills in public health.

Research skills

Icddr,b encourages the intern to learn innovative ways of research in an effective manner for building a strong base of research.

“I learned how to conduct literature reviews in a systematic manner that allows for the collections of secondary data while critically assessing the finding of relevant studies, in order to answer the research question at hand. My prior knowledge regarding systematic reviews gained from classes, helped me in connecting the dots while I was being mentored. I also learned how to develop PRISMA Flow charts and use software like EndNote and Zotero, which assisted me in performing systematic reviews efficiently.”

Utilizing all of the aforementioned skills, she successfully co-authored and submitted a manuscript entitled “Prevalence of depression and its correlates among public university students in Bangladesh”. The manuscript was recently published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, a high impact factor journal with a Q1 ranking (Scimago Journal and Country Rank).

Leadership skills

Adiba Iqbal was also placed in charge of leading a group of three internees, which required her to distribute workload and monitor the completion of tasks assigned in order to ensure constant progress of the project at hand. That led her to improve leadership skills that will benefit her in every avenue of her academic and professional life. 

Communication skills

While working at icddr,b, Adiba’s interpersonal skills also developed significantly due to collaborating with a team of local and international researchers. The communication and feedback skills that she has gained, as a result, helped in improving her effective team-working skills, which will definitely come in handy in her professional career in the future. 

“Each project that I came to know about at icddr,b dealt with health-related issues that imposed a significant burden on the people of Bangladesh. Their research focused on tackling these major issues and developing solutions that would not only strengthen the health system of Bangladesh but could also potentially help other counties around the world ease their public health-related burdens like disease outbreaks. I would very much like to follow up to be a part of this organization in the future, by working as a research physician or research fellow, in projects of similar scope and magnitude.”

The internship program at icddr,b is far more demanding and intensive than that of other organizations as she mentioned above. However, with hard work and dedication, one can be able to gain a treasure trove of knowledge and experience from the organization, in an extremely short amount of time. 

Adiba Iqbal

Former intern, icddr,b
(Edited by: Nafis Rahman, Rifath Alina)