When Elizabeth Reese and the other 100 first-year medical students arrived at Duke the first week of August for orientation, they may have thought a stethoscope would be one of the first instruments placed in their hands.
It was a paintbrush instead.
On the second day of orientation at the Duke University School of Medicine, the incoming class received community service training in the morning. Before noon, they were on a bus on their way to a Durham charter school.
The med students spent the rest of the day applying a fresh coat of badly needed paint to the walls of the 17 rooms, stairways and hallways of the Carter Community School -- helping create a better learning environment for the kindergartners through eighth graders returning soon from summer vacation. The school is located in the St. James Family Life Center on Club Boulevard in the Walltown community.
“It’s great to help brighten the school while at the same time have an opportunity to get to know some of my fellow students,” said medical student Elizabeth Reese of Durham as she painted a hallway. “I’m proud of Duke for incorporating this as part of orientation. A medical career is a service-oriented profession that involves a lifelong commitment, so it’s important to learn to serve people not only in a medical setting but out in the community.”
Importance of Service
Having students perform community service is an integral component of medical education at Duke, says Caroline Haynes, M.D., Ph.D., director of Student Affairs for the medical school. Community service is so important that the school traditionally devotes a full day of its weeklong orientation to it, as well as making it a part of the school’s curriculum goals and objectives.
In the last few years, the school has divided the class into small groups and sent them to visit different community sites in Durham and then report back to the whole group. For the first time this year, the students actually performed community service work as the second day of the Aug. 1-5 orientation.
“Our point is to emphasize to the students the importance of becoming involved in the community and to inform them of the needs in that community,” Haynes explains. “They’re going to be learning how to practice medicine with the people in the surrounding community, so this will give them a greater appreciation of that community. We also wanted to demonstrate that people’s health depends in part on their environment and educational opportunities, and is not just a product of what happens when they encounter the health system.
” To prepare the students for community health related projects throughout their medical school experience, representatives of the Learning Together program in the Duke Division of Community Health presented an hour- and 15-minute community health training workshop. Students also were required to later complete an online community health training module to participate in future community health service activities.
“We provide students with opportunities to work with the local community to improve health and teach them skills they can use as physicians to work effectively with any community,” says Tia Simmons, training coordinator. “We want them to know what it’s like working with a variety of populations, experience the interdisciplinary nature of work in community service projects and continually develop skills for working with diverse communities and cultures.”
Duke medical students have a rich tradition of community service and are currently participating in 15 - 20 independent community service projects, including established ones such as Habitat for Humanity, as well as ones they developed such as a health education project at a women’s prison that brought national honors.
This academic year the Davison Council, the medical student government association, has set a goal of Duke medical students performing 7,500 hours of community service in honor of the 75th anniversary of Duke Medicine. (Duke Hospital opened in 1930 and the School of Medicine began its first classes later that year.) The painting project at the Carter Community School has already contributed the first 500 hours.
“The 7,500 hours of community service idea came out of the Davison service committee’s goal to make community service more a central part of the Duke medical school experience and to make service a year-round commitment,” said Asher Cantor, a fourth-year med student and service vice president of the Davison Council. “The 75th anniversary service drive will hopefully serve as a perfect vehicle to make students aware of all the ongoing projects, and will serve as a benchmark for subsequent years to meet or surpass.”
A Worthy Project
In seeking a community service project for the first-year students, the medical school contacted the Duke University Office of Community Affairs about the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership. This partnership is the primary focus of Duke’s commitment to Durham and concentrates on 12 neighborhoods, seven public schools and the Carter Community School.
“We were pleased to help them connect with a large, meaningful project out of the summer heat for 100 students,” said Sam Miglarese, assistant director of the community affairs office. “The project made a difference not only to the medical students giving of their time and talent but also to the faculty, staff and students of Carter Community School who painted right along with them. One goal of our office is to provide opportunities for service for undergraduate, graduate and professional students to engage actively in service to others in the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership as part of their total educational experience at Duke.”
The medical school also enlisted the support of others. Duke University Facilities Management Department employees prepared the site for painting, sent master painter Marvin White to coordinate the painting and solicited free paint from a local paint supplier, Sherwin-Williams Co. Staff members from the Office of Medical Education and Learning Together also donned work clothes and joined in painting.
“It’s super that there are projects like this to give opportunities for Duke employees to volunteer to help the community,” says Claude Stubblefield, a supervisor with Facilities Management who helped with the project. “Duke employees want to work in the community, and the community gets to see that things are being done.”
Making a Difference
Marcus Jackson usually would have been doing what lots of teens do in the summer -- watching TV, shooting hoops or doing chores. But when Duke medical students were painting his school, Marcus wanted to be there. The 13-year-old Carter Community School student and his brother, Larry, 14, spent several hours painting to support their school.
“It’s great,” said Marcus. “It’s going to make the school look so much better. They [medical students] have been funny, telling jokes and laughing. They look like they’re having a good time.”
The boys’ mother, Florence Jackson, thought the project was important enough to drive them across town from their home to participate. “It’s fantastic because the school needed something to brighten it up,” she says. “Those medical students can really help a lot in the community. They’re also letting the children know that someone cares about them and serving as role models.”
Gail Taylor, principal of the free charter school open to any child in Durham city or county, says the project helped create a safer and cleaner environment for its 150 students.
“Although it’s not an academic project, it sets the tone for students to learn and excel even before they reach the classroom,” says Taylor. “The project is encouraging because Duke is providing continuous support through a variety of service projects for the school, which relies on state and local funding. Some of the medical students said they will now volunteer at the school to tutor or lead sports activities.”
Brian Kadera, a first-year med student from Cedar City, Utah, said the project allowed students to immediately start making a difference in the community and derive the satisfaction that comes with that.
“One of the reasons I chose Duke was because of its reputation for being pro-active in the community,” Kadera says. “To be out in community on the second day we’re here really shows that community service is part of Duke’s mission and assures me that I’ve chosen the right place.”
For more information about community service projects, contact the Learning Together program at 668-3787 or visit http://learningtogether.duhs.duke.edu/, or contact the Duke-Durham Partnership at 668-6300 or visit http://community.duke.edu/. |
