Week 4

Two additional guys joined our volunteer group, so we had to take 2 cars to the clinic. We took a different way and nearly got lost, but once again, my handy-dandy GPS saved us from going completely off course. I was expecting to finish the recipe cards, but Sam was having a meeting in her office, so she assigned me to medical records with 3 of the guys.

We had to go through all the patients' records and trash all the ones that pre-dated February 2003. No matter how old a file was, as long as there was at least one paper that said February 2003 or later, we had to keep it. I got the hang of it after my first load, and although I wasn't the speed demon of the team, I definitely was not the slowest one either. In all, we sorted through 4 cartfuls of files. There was a bit of confusion keeping everything in numerical order, and we did make a few mistakes, but we were able to catch them before it got out of hand (we hope).

Even though the work was tedious, it was easy and necessary. The time went by pretty fast since I wasn't all by myself like the other times. One of the guys who had been in dental told us about a patient who tried pulling out his tooth with pliers, but the root of tooth wouldn't come out, so he tried to dig it out with a screwdriver. As one might guess, the process was extremely painful, and he passed out numerous times. He tried doing it on his own because he didn't have money to go to a dentist, but he was finally forced to come to the clinic because he wasn't able to get his tooth completely out. That is one conversation I won't soon forget.

Although I completed my 10 hours, I will continue to go back for awhile. At the very least, I want to finish the recipe cards. I still need to shadow a doctor, and that won't be possible until after Easter.