Khadija Sesay already had a full plate. A junior nursing major, she was immersed in a rigorous curriculum that involves clinical rotations at some of the region’s best hospitals. But she wanted more.

Her desire to explore other aspects of nursing motivated her to apply for the Independence Blue Cross (IBX) Foundation’s Nursing Internship Program in March of 2026. She was one of 21 students accepted and spent 10 weeks last summer in primary care settings at Mercy Fitzgerald.

Working in a hypertension prevention program under the supervision of a professional nurse, Sesay completed outreach calls, recorded patients’ vital signs, discussed the side effects of medications, and presented ways to help alleviate the condition.

“I also got experience with electronic health records, took a deep dive into the outpatient database, and became familiar with a lot of medications that we learned about in class,” she explains.

The South Philadelphia native even conducted her own study, supervised by her professional nurse, of 30 patients between 45 and 65 years of age to measure the effectiveness of hypertension prevention strategies. She displayed the results in a poster presentation at the IBX recognition ceremony on August 6.

Sesay enjoyed the individual interactions with patients because it was more intimate than providing simultaneous care for multiple people in clinicals and because she felt more in control of the process.

“Primary care is super important,” she says. “The internship showed me how to build relationships with patients and how important trust is. It gave me the confidence to talk to patients like they’re actual people we sit with on the bus or meet at the grocery store.”

The primary-care setting also provided some lessons in setting priorities. One day, Sesay and her nurse colleague were speaking to a patient with high blood pressure when the woman revealed that she was about to lose her house. Realizing the situation as a significant source of stress, the nurses changed direction and became advocates for the woman, finally arranging for an agency to step in.

“This internship influenced me as a nursing student because it made me realize that I don’t want to care for patients just when they’re experiencing a health crisis,” she admits. “I want to intervene earlier, and this summer gave me a chance to see what my future as a nurse might look like.”

That kind of insight is the point of the summer program, which the IBX Foundation describes as “a paid internship designed for undergraduate nursing students who seek to understand non-traditional roles in nursing.”

Sesay and the others worked 37.5 hours a week for 10 weeks at $20/hour.

She absolutely recommends the program to her peers: “It’s really important for students to see all aspects of nursing and to assess the patient as more than just the condition.”