The gap between theoretical education and executive readiness among graduate students in medical sciences, particularly in interdisciplinary fields such as disaster risk management, has been widely reported. This letter describes the redesign of an internship program for eight graduate students (five PhD and three master's students) in disaster and emergency health, based on a Project-Based Learning approach. Over three consecutive semesters (February 2023 to February 2025), instead of passive observation, students assumed executive responsibility for improving a hospital's Hospital Safety Index (HSI) score and its disaster risk management processes at Rofideh Rehabilitation Hospital. Student satisfaction and learning were assessed using a researcher-designed five-point Likert questionnaire and semi-structured qualitative interviews. More than 71% of students agreed or strongly agreed across all evaluated domains (project design, active participation, research skills, problem-solving, teamwork, and faculty role), and the hospital's safety index improved from level 6 to level 7. This experience suggests that assigning genuine executive responsibility for a real project may serve as a complementary approach to traditional internships in graduate medical education, although generalization requires further studies with larger samples.