Med Students Give First Aid to Homes
On a recent spring day, IUSM students donned jeans instead of lab
coats and traded their stethoscopes for lawnmowers, rakes and garden
tools. Then they rolled up their sleeves and got to work helping
needy homeowners.
One hundred students participated in Spring House Calls on April
19, an annual activity that teams students with homeowners in inner-city
neighborhoods bordering the IUSM campus. They fanned out in teams
to paint and plant flowers, do yard work and make minor property
repairs. Many of the materials they used were donated by local
businesses and organizations.
But students were doing far more than sprucing up properties, says
event organizer Varon Cantrell, MS3. “At the heart of medicine
is the idea of service, and with that in mind, we were able to serve
our local community in a capacity other than in a clinical setting.
We took pride in our work and we take even more pride in the relationships
we have established with the people we have worked with in recent
years.”
Launched in 1996, Spring House Calls is a project that comes under
the auspices of the School’s Office of Medical Service-Learning.
Since that time, nearly 600 students have volunteered more than
5,000 hours of service to the program. Students often say their
experiences better prepare them to become more community-minded
physicians.
Patricia Keener, MD, assistant dean of medical service-learning,
says the experience is an important part of a student’s journey
to become a physician. “Spring House Calls and similar volunteer
initiatives impart the important value of community service and,
as a result, students are more likely to become leading advocates
for health care policies to improve health care delivery to the
public.”
Other medical students coordinating this year’s program were
Frances Contreras, Beena Parbhu, Marc Lazzaro, Laura Cluxton and
Toni Lin (all MS3). For more information about Spring House Calls
and other OMSL programs, go to http://medicine.iu.edu/~omsl/.
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