First Day of Intensity

Yes, the title is made in sarcastic jest, but I still very much enjoyed my first day volunteering again at San Jose.

I arrived at the clinic at 12:20p.m., and the first thing I noticed about the new location is how much better the parking is. There was plenty of space whereas previously, there were times when you couldn't find a space whatsoever, or your car may become blocked-in or immovable once other cars parked around you. However, you must now pay for parking, so I wonder how the patients are responding to that change. Hopefully they provide free parking for low-income patients that cannot afford even those minor fees. The outside of the building also looks very fresh and modern with large plate glass windows in a pale aqua/sky blue for walls. San Jose Clinic now looks better than many regular clinics I've been to, so I'm incredibly happy for their upgrades.

I entered the building and managed to catch Sam and Rachel Chacko just as they were starting the tour of the new building. The first floor is just for volunteer offices, and the second floor is the medical clinic for adults and children as well as the pharmacy. The medical clinic now has four pods in each wing, and each pod has four exam rooms. This is a huge change from before when they only had two exam rooms total and one prep room for all medical patients. Also, the pharmacy now has a lot more room for organization and storage. The third floor is the optometry clinic run by UH Optomoetry school four days a week and the dental office where they have six chairs on each side of the wing, giving twelve chairs total. This has also been a major upgrade since they used to only have seven chairs total in the last building. Also, the old optometry clinic was a rather small, dark room. All of the wings are painted in bright colors, and each area has its own waiting room. In addition, each floor has a common area waiting room with the large glass windows facing to the street. There were also beautiful additions of large, stained glass squares that hung from the ceilings. San Jose has truly turned things around, and it's an amazing sight to behold.

After our tour, Sam sat down to talk to us, asking what we were doing after college and what we wanted to get out of our experience at San Jose. I told her I would be attending Baylor College of Medicine (yay! =D) and that I really wanted to get to observe the most prevalent conditions at San Jose. From experience, I knew they would be diabetes and hypertension amongst adults and childhood obesity amongst the child patients, but in Medical Microbiology, we had to focus specifically on infectious diseases. The most common infectious disease at San Jose, aside from the common cold, would be TB I believe.

Following the chat, Rachel and I were assigned to Sue and Debbie, who had us working on putting an address sticker on envelopes and folding them into RSVP cards to be sent out for the Art with Heart auction on May 15th. I thought it would be most efficient if we each took a job, so I did the labels while Rachel did the folding. It was relaxing after a long and hectic week to just sit and and talk about every random thing in life as we contributed toward the success of San Jose Clinic in even the smallest ways. We talked about fashion (of course), weddings (we're such girls), cars, life post-college, current events (Tiger Woods and other such seriousness), art, penguins, and everything in between. Yeah, we're strangely talkative.

Two hours flew by, and we finished our time for the day at San Jose Clinic. The clinic was pretty empty since they were about to have their monthly Saturday clinic where seven doctors come in and see a large number of patients. It was time to go and sign out, and we both left to enjoy the rest of our Friday afternoon. We may not have spent our time immunizing patients, diagnosing diseases, or even taking vitals, but we still helped San Jose Clinic in a direct way, knowing the end results. Rachel and I both helped Tri-Beta volunteer at the Art with Heart auction fundraiser last year, so we know how important it is to the clinic. I was happy to contribute in any way I possibly could.

Here's some exciting things that will happen in the upcoming week until I blog again!

- Auditioning for UST Idol (I'm nervous!)

- Cooking and serving dinner at Hospitality Apartments, free housing for cancer patients

- Writing my Bioethics paper

- Finishing my Cell project outline

- Writing my Cell lab report

- Writing my Summa articles and laying out the Entertainment Section for the March issue

- Whatever exciting things also pop up in my life!

Random Musing

My first volunteer day will be this Friday from 12:30 - 2p.m., so until I have more to write on what I'm actually doing this semester at San Jose Clinic, I thought I would write briefly about a random musing related to health care.

With health care reform, many changes are already being felt within clinics today, ranging from EMR's to stimulus packages. Community health care centers have received some additional funding, but with this, there has been an influx of patients. Often, a high capacity of patients pushes resources to the limit. Yes, underserved clinics may hire more employees and upgrade technology with stimulus package funding, but what do they do when they cannot provide for rapidly increasing demand?

In addition, with the requirement for all Americans to be insured, lower income patients will turn increasingly to community health centers for the lowest cost. Will lower income patients be able to afford this new mandatory health insurance? Also, if they do still turn to these underserved clinics for low-cost health care, how will community health centers across the nation compensate for this? Other clinics will begin seeing them as competition for insured patients, and health care may face more capitalistic issues than necessary.

Also, even with government funding of implementation of services such as Electronic Medical Records, will community health centers have the funding to cover the maintenance of such systems? Well, the better question is, will such upgrades continue to be costly after initial setup? They are essentially meant to cut the costs of health care by removing paper fees, but then they run the risk of rapidly decreasing patient confidentiality with so many access points to EMR's.

Yes, these musings have been mostly financially-focused, but in this economic climate, it's sensible to ponder on these things, even in the case of low income health care and underserved clinics.

Volunteering Setup

A quick update: I'll be starting at San Jose Clinic next Friday, volunteering from 12:30 - 2:00p.m. This week, they are finishing up their move, so they will not be ready for volunteers yet. I'm interested to see what I'll be doing!

_____________________________

I emailed Samantha Sherman at the beginning of the week about volunteering again at San Jose, and she replied today that they'd be happy to have me back. I sent her my weekly availability to see which times work best for me to work. Hopefully, I will be volunteering on either Monday, Wednesday, or Friday afternoons.

Last spring, I volunteered Monday or Wednesday mornings because the morning hours are always the best times to get the most patient interaction. However, my morning classes this semester do not permit me to work the same hours.

Since I will be there in the afternoons when it is a lot slower, I expect to see more of the paperwork and everyday work away from the patients. Also, San Jose will be moving locations, so I don't doubt a lot of work will be geared toward that major event. I am incredibly excited to see the new facilities built for San Jose, a fully deserving institution.

This is just a quick update on my status quo, but I am definitely eager to get back to spending time at San Jose Clinic!

Another Year, Another Service Learning Assignment

Last spring, I volunteered at the San Jose Clinic downtown as part of the service-learning assignment for Dr. Larios' medical microbiology class. Going into it, I had no idea just how much I would garner throughout the process.

In the time I spent there, I learned a great deal about the low-income, uninsured aspects of health care. Growing up in a privileged environment catering toward the upper societal echelons of medicine, it was needless to say an eye-opening experience.

The health professionals and patients I encountered at San Jose were by far some of the most grateful and accommodating individuals with the gentlest spirits. Despite being a college student newly thrown into this environment, everyone welcomed me with an open mind toward teaching about what it takes to run an underserved clinic.

I mostly spent my volunteering hours doing triage and vitals, but the patient interaction that comes with such responsibilities taught me invaluable lessons about people and the logistics of health care. It also was a great asset for improving my medical Spanish, just in time for a medical mission trip in El Salvador and a summer internship with a medical oncologist serving primarily Spanish speaking patients this past summer. At the end of Spring 2009, I also partook in San Jose Clinic's annual Art with Heart fundraiser, which was the first time I ever participated in an art auction.

Speaking of my medical mission trip in El Salvador, now that I have seen what completely rural health care is like, it makes me greatly appreciate the modern conveniences even San Jose Clinic has. Compared to the FIMRC clinic in Las Delicias, San Jose is blessed with regard to resources and health professionals on hand. The FIMRC clinic only had one doctor for all the patients in the community while San Jose staffs specialists ranging from cardiologists and dermatologists to dentists and optometrists. That's merely the beginning of where the FIMRC clinic lacks in supplies and services.

I fully intend to continue volunteering at San Jose Clinic this semester and truly look forward to what else I can learn from them. This looks to be quite an exciting and busy end to my college education!

Finishing the Service-Learning

I emailed Sam to email my volunteer hours directly, saving the trouble of printing out the form and going to the clinic to get it signed.

This semester has just flown by, and I can't believe the Med Micro final is in a week. The service learning aspect of the course has by far been one of the most interesting parts of my college education to date. I feel like I am leaving the course not only with new knowledge about diseases relevant to everyday life but also with knowledge about health care at an underserved clinic.

New experiences and realizations I gained this semester range from volunteering at Art with Heart to learning the greater necessity of medical profession Spanish. I need to learn some more working Spanish before I go to El Salvador in order to ease the experience there.

Overall, this service-learning experience has been well worth the effort and should definitely be continued in the future.

Swine Flu

Panic about Swine Flu is setting in as schools close around Houston, and weekend events are being canceled. One girl at Episcopal High School in Bellaire was diagnosed with Swine Flu, but she has been treated and fully recovered. The one toddler who died due to Swine Flu apparently spent the day at the Galleria the day before he started showing symptoms of Swine Flu. This caused local news outlets to react with their usual scare tactics, causing pandemonium in communities.

Education Rainbow Challenge is a major event that occurs once in the fall and once in the spring where elementary and middle school children compete in math and science competitions. The American Chemical Society always volunteers at the event and show chemistry demonstrations for the kids and parents. However, due to this Swine Flu scare, the event has been canceled. This is such a shame since approximately 600 children attend the event, and UST always brings about 60 - 90 volunteers.

I have been paying close attention to reports on Swine Flu, reading emails from the embassy in El Salvador about the situation there. As of right now, there are no reports of Swine Flu in El Salvador, but I am slightly worried about traveling for the medical mission trip in two weeks. Stay tuned to find out any updates!

Art with Heart

Last night was the 3rd annual Art with Heart fundraiser for San Jose Clinic. I arrived at 4:30p.m. to volunteer, and I ended up learning how to use the electronic tablets used for the art auction. I would be working the tables throughout the night to help people make bids on items.

I was on my feet all evening as people came up to me asking for help, placing bids, and checking on the status of bids already placed. I absolutely loved a painting titled "Rose" and was actually interested in bidding on it myself. It ended up going for $240 at the end of the night. Overall, the event raised almost $70,000. Personally, I thought they would've raised more, but there was a lot of art that went unsold at the end of the night, which was slightly sad.

The Cardinal showed up, and they had a live auction of his portrait, which went for $5000. The man who won it ended up donating the portrait to San Jose, so that was a really touching moment. Matress Mac of Gallery Furniture was actually the speaker for the live auction, and he was very funny.

I am really glad I got to be a part of Art with Heart as both a volunteer from San Jose and a volunteer from Tri-Beta. I met a lot of great people, saw workers from the clinic outside of the professional setting, and got to see local artists who actually put their work into the auction. It was a different experience, and I'll be interested in coming next year as either a volunteer or bidder.