Volunteering Highlight for Pre-Medicine Students
For Pre-Medicine students, having a well rounded resume is essential. Have you ever thought about volunteering by doing something that will get you medical experience outside of the hospital? UIowa Mobile Clinic does just this.
The mission of UIowa Mobile Clinic is to provide health screening and services to under-served populations within the Iowa City area. During each free visit, a patient will have the opportunity to undergo blood glucose testing for a diabetes screening, blood pressure and vitals screening, cholesterol screenings, health education, and physician services. Some clinics even offer flu shots, HIV & Hepatitis C testing, dental services, social work, and physical therapy evaluations. All clinics are in a non-hospital setting, and as the name “Mobile Clinic” describes, everything we do is mobile. We unload materials from a car at the beginning of the day, and load the car back up at the end.
So what can you, as a University of Iowa undergraduate student, do without medical school experience? The answer is more than you think. With proper training (which is not time consuming at all) you can become an EMR (Electronic Medical Record) Expert, an interpreter (for languages of Spanish, Arabic, and/or French), a scribe, an HIV/HCV screener, a patient educator, or a patient advocate. You could even run the labs or vitals station!
The great thing about Mobile Clinic is that you can volunteer in any position you are trained for and as much as you want. Of course you can only volunteer at the times and locations clinics are offered, but there are so many options to choose from. My best advice is train early. At the beginning of the semester, there is always a big rush of people who hear about Mobile Clinic for the first time and this causes a flood of people finishing training quickly and filling up all the volunteer slots.
In my experience with Mobile Clinic, I became trained on all the positions I could, but I have only worked (so far) as a scribe and as the volunteer who runs the lab station. I fell in love with these positions so much that I really wanted to focus on just these jobs rather than bouncing around from place to place. Being a scribe is so far my favorite position. I get to stay with current medical students and physicians, take notes for them, and still get to visit patients personally. In addition to this, I sometimes even get to practice my Spanish. I am by no means ready to be an interpreter, but a little practice never hurts.
As a first year college student getting hands on clinical experience such as this, I feel privileged not only to volunteer doing something I love but also to be helping others in the process. Where else are you able to go to college and do these kinds of things as a freshman undergraduate student outside of a hospital and at your own time?
If you are interested in learning more about mobile clinic’s mission, services, or volunteering program, learn more about the Iowa Mobile Clinic.