Student Outreach, Part 1

I volunteered at the new Student Outreach Clinic today. It's about time our school had a student-run clinic, so kudos to all those working to make this a permanent aspect of our school. It's not an official IU clinic yet because of some legal issues that came up recently, but hopefully those will be resolved soon. That means we can't officially diagnose people or write prescriptions yet, not that I'm personally capable of doing so, anyway. The patient flow is still kind of slow since the clinic is still pretty new, and not that many people in the community know about it. It's in a part of town that is a little rougher than even I'm used to, if you can believe it. It's a bad sign when the clinic organizers tell you to walk in groups to cross the street from the parking lot to the clinic in broad daylight. Regardless, it was an interesting day at the clinic, and it was nice to be able to help some people out who probably wouldn't have gotten the help they needed. There was a kid who sprained his ankle right outside the church where we were, so it was pretty convenient that he was able to hobble right inside to be seen by a doctor. Might have been more convenient for him had he not fallen down some steps, but I think he'll be okay.

I spent a great deal to time talking to a lady who had some arthritis in her hands but was allergic to medications that would otherwise be effective for most people and she also needed a precription refill for another medical condition but wasn't able to get a hold of her primary care physician for the past five months because the scheduled times that were available would get filled too quickly and they wouldn't take walk-ins and she couldn't get through via the pharmacy either but didn't want to switch doctors and she had some really bad arthritis in her hands so much so that she couldn't hold up a plate and she couldn't get refills on her medications because she couldn't get a hold of her doctor and she had some pain in her left hand so she mostly uses her right now and she also needed a precription refilled because her medications were running out and she didn't know what else to do so she needed our help.

So we tried to help her. We couldn't prescribe her what she needed even if we wanted to since she already had prescriptions from her physician, so we tried to counsel her on some other solutions she could try. Everything was either unfeasible or had already been tried to no avail. Finally, our doctor said he would contact her doctor to get her script refilled. It happens a lot where our jobs as doctors and medical students have nothing to do with diagnosing people or prescribing drugs. Sometimes the only remedy that can bring immediate relief is just to have someone listen to you.