This week, CADSIG (Children and Adults with Disabilities Student Interest Group) celebrated Disabilities Month with two events.  The first event was our DisABILITIES Fair, which we held in the Medical Science building atrium.  We had fantastic participation from over 20 local groups that provide services, resources, and advocacy to citizens with disabilities.

We particularly wanted to target medical students, who generally do not have the opportunity to learn about these services and resources, despite the fact that almost every medical student will come intact with individuals with disabilities in the health care setting both during their rotations and throughout their careers.

Although disability fairs like this are commonly held in the community, this is the first time that one has been organized on the IU medical school campus and was targeted to health care professionals in training.  We hope to make this an annual event every March.

We also had a self-advocates panel where we had six individuals with disabilities came and talked about their experiences, particularly with health care.  As a future health care professional, it was very helpful and beneficial to hear from them about their experiences and to learn about how they want to be treated.  The important message that I learned from this panel is that people with disabilities want to be treated just like everyone else and not pitied or have everything done for them.  They don’t want to be defined by their disability, because there is so much more to them—their personalities, their interests, their ambitions, etc.—that you would miss otherwise.  As with every patient, communication with individuals with disabilities is essential.  It is important to listen to them, because they know better than anyone what their body is telling them.  We also hope to make this self-advocates panel an annual event as well.

We greatly appreciate the participation of the self-advocates and all the presenters at the fair, as well as the hard work of all the members of CADSIG who helped make these events a success.  Finally, I also want to thank Dr. Ciccarelli and Dr. Weber for all their help with our student interest group and the events that we put on.

Cheers!

I recently became the Development Chair for the IU Student Outreach Clinic.  The IU Student Outreach Clinic began a few years ago as medical student-run clinic, which takes place every Saturday at the Neighborhood Fellowship Church on East 10^th street.  It provides free ambulatory medical care to the residents of Indianapolis’ east side, who don’t have insurance.

At the clinic, 1^st and 2^nd year medical students follow the patients as they come in and take their vitals and record their chief complaint.  Then a 3^rd or 4^th year student (who has more clinical training) performs a focused history and physical and develops an assessment and plan.  The 1^st or 2^nd year student can assist in the history and physical if they feel comfortable doing so.  Afterward, the student presents the patient to a volunteer staff physician to confirm or modify the assessment and plan and to write a prescription for medications if needed.  Certain medications can be provided by the clinic formulary, which is staffed by Pharmacy students from the Butler School of Pharmacy.  This is a really great partnership that has been developed at the clinic, since the Pharmacy students can counsel the patients about their medications.

The clinic has a very nice set-up with 3 private exam rooms and the capabilities of the clinic are constantly being enhanced.  For instance, recently, the clinic began doing blood draws to perform certain labs (I wrote in a previous blog about learning how to do that).

One of my responsibilities as a member of the Steering Committee is to serve every so often as a Clinic Manager.  I’m kind of nervous about that, since as a graduate student, I’m not always thinking about clinical things.  Last Saturday, I got my first chance to learn the duties of a Clinic Manager.  I got to work with Selyne Samuels, the Education Chair who taught me how to draw blood (again, see previous blog entry).  Selyne was really knowledgeable and helpful, and I feel a lot less intimidated now than before.  Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to work with someone once or twice more before flying solo, but I’m confident I’ll do a good job.

All in all, I think the IU Student Outreach Clinic is a fantastic medical student-run volunteer project, and I’m proud and excited to be a part of it.  I highly encourage all medical students to sign up to volunteer.  It’s a very rewarding experience.

Cheers!