Return To Care Experience

The Return to Care Program provides an opportunity for pre-health professionals to volunteer for twelve weeks in any department at Athens Regional Hospital. Per request, I was assigned to the neurology floor, where I comforted and provided assistance to both patients and their families. This allowed me to have direct patient interaction as well as learn new skills by observing the technicians, nurses, and doctors working around me. It was during this experience that I learned the true reality of a career in medicine. Both the difficult nature of many patients as well as the potential for life and death situations create an extremely stressful environment that any future healthcare provider should be made aware of.

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As a participant in their Global Health service-learning program, I travelled to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, where I partook in special medical training seminars and began a program of hands-on caregiving to the poor and underserved in the area. The participation in this program also involved ninety hours of clinical work, including shadowing and assisting a licensed medical professional in healthcare-related community outreach programs across …show more content…
Prior to the trip, I had very little hands on experience with the practices employed by physicians. I had interacted with patients and observed medical professionals taking vitals and asserting treatment plans, but I had never had the responsibility of doing either on my own. While there I learned, among other essential vitals, how to take a patient’s blood pressure, calculate their pulse, administer a blood glucose test, and then how to use this information to diagnose a plethora of illnesses. While practicing these skills on one of my patients, Teddy, I had a personal realization that transformed my motivation for becoming a doctor. She was ten years old and was rapidly approaching death due to flu-related complications. She had been sick for months but was unable to visit a clinic due to financial obstacles and lack of access. My team and I did everything we could to help the little girl; however, the care was likely too late to save her life. I admit that prior to this incident I was completely ignorant of the shortcomings of the healthcare system, but I had now personally witnessed the true depth of the issue and the tragedies that it can cause. I no longer yearned to become a doctor to provide care to the most fortunate but instead to all of the Teddys quietly dying beneath the radar. This career is