Haven Free Clinic Case Study

It’s seven on a Saturday morning, and my first patient of the day as a nutrition counselor at Haven Free Clinic is a Hispanic male in his mid-50s. When I introduce myself to Jorge and try to get to know him better, he says little. Perhaps he’s shy or nervous, or he’s thinking about what he’s going to get his kids to eat after his appointment. I notice he has a keychain of a soccer team I know. I ask him how the team was doing and his face lights up. He tells me how it’s been a while since they won consistently and asks if I play. I nod and ask him, he does. We work to develop a regimen that he could follow to achieve his goals of weight loss and high blood pressure, which attribute to the worsening of his chronic ailment, which brought him to the clinic in the first place.

When I tell this story, and others like it, I reach into a particular topic, …show more content…
This upbringing was critical in encouraging my own desire to work in close contact with a diverse population in a variety of geographic areas. I would like to conduct my medical career in a setting that converges urban and rural settings and interact with patients in an intimate setting as well as utilize and add to the resources of a supportive academic and/or a private medical system for constant engagement with the learning process of the medical craft while teaching and practicing the newest innovations in the field. My experiences in the communities I’ve lived in have provided me with the insight to work within both types of areas. My most prominent experiences in health care have come from working in clinics that serve underserved populations where I’ve lived. Even though these clinics were mostly in urban populations, the interactions I had there brought me face to face with people from all over the