Health Mentor Experience Paper

Health Mentor program at Thomas Jefferson University is an opportunity for students from different professions and different backgrounds to meet with a real patient living with a chronic health condition and/or impairment. At the first year of college of Pharmacy, I didn’t have the experience of dealing directly with patients. Firstly, I thought that the Health Mentor Program is waste of time. I didn’t understand what is the idea behind the program. That happened because we had a very busy schedule at the Pharmacy school at that time. I thought that dealing with the assigned patient to our group, it will be like dealing with any other case on paper. At that time also, I didn’t recognize how effective dealing with the other professional members …show more content…
I realized that dealing with patients directly is totally different experience than the cases on paper. I learned that we must deal with the whole person with his/her background and beliefs, his/her fears and concern about his/her condition. Dealing with the other team members gave me the opportunity to know the scope of practice of the other disciplines. I realized that when single person dealing with a patient case is totally different than a team dealing with a patient case. When a single person from one discipline deals with a patient case, He/She sees the patient from just one point of view. But when a team consists of different members with different aspects of the patient case, the team integrates to achieve the optimal patient benefits and outcomes. I realized that through Health Mentor Program, we dealt with the whole environment surrounding our …show more content…
I need to step back and collect all the information about the program to give a fair judgment. I realized that the teamwork can provide collective strength and power for the actions taken to achieve optimal patient outcomes. The work will be more productive and efficient with the cooperative efforts of the team members. I acquired the experience to communicate with other healthcare professionals openly. With the teamwork, I learned that the effective team must develop a strategy for problem-solving and conflict management. For a team to be a comfortable place for all members, each person must respect the others. When a shared mission between the team members, everyone is using their own abilities toward a common goal. The result is greater than the efforts of a single person. After graduation, I will use the characteristics I learned from Health Mentor Program cooperating with the other healthcare professionals to make effective decisions, resolve conflicts, quickly address problems that are hurting our patient outcomes, and to support one