News: Serving the Durham Community (INSIDE Mon, 21 August 2006

First-year Duke Medical Students Perform Community Service Projects During Orientation

BY Sherry Williamson

Before Jeremy Miles, Dionne Peacher and Jerlinda Ross started their first year of medical school, they knew they would have to hit the books hard from the beginning. Little did they know that the first books they were exposed to would not be “Gray’s Anatomy,” but ones written on a kindergarten through 8th grade level.

That’s because the three were busy unpacking and sorting hundreds of children’s books at the Healthy Start Academy Charter Public School in Durham on the second day of their one-week orientation to the Duke University School of Medicine on July 31 through Aug. 4.

The 101 first-year medical students divided into four groups and performed community service projects at several facilities in Durham. In addition to the Healthy Start Academy, they were busy helping others at the Durham Nativity School, George Watts Montessori Elementary Magnet School and the Carter Community School.

There was not a stethoscope in sight but plenty of paint brushes as the medical students painted unsightly walls, unpacked and sorted new textbooks, replaced broken window blinds, assembled chairs, moved furniture, emptied storage cabinets, cleaned desks and set up classrooms in anticipation of the start of the new school year.

“This is a great project because it’s vital that we interact with and get to know the community we will be serving during our medical training,” said Ross of Warner Robins, GA, as she unpacked books.

“In performing community service projects during the first week of medical school, it sets the tone for what’s expected of the dynamics between the medical school and the city of Durham -- reaching out to the community and not being isolated from the people we serve,” added Peacher of Clarksville, TN.

In addition to emphasizing the important need to provide service to the community as students and later as physicians, Miles said the project helped medical students “get to know each other and work together as a team for the common good.” He is from Greenville, NC.

Importance of Service
Performing 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. The school regards community service as so important that it traditionally has devoted a full day of its weeklong orientation to it, as well as making it a part of the school’s curriculum goals and objectives.

This is the second year in a row that the school has divided the incoming class into groups and sent them to perform service in the community where most of the patients they will encounter during their medical training reside.

“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 want 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, Tia Simmons and Kim Nichols of the Learning Together program in the Duke Division of Community Health presented an hour- and 15-minute community health training workshop before students went to one of the four sites. Students also were required to later complete an online training module to participate in future community health service activities.

In seeking community service projects 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 large, meaningful projects that made a difference not only to the medical students, who gave of their time and talent, but also to the faculty, staff and students of all four schools,” says Sam Miglarese, director of community engagement for the Office of Community Affairs, who briefed the students about the partnership. “Our office provides 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.”

Community Response
Durham Mayor William Bell also was on hand during the training to welcome the new students to Durham and invite them to participate in volunteer activities in the community throughout their four years of medical school.

Dietrich A.M. Danner, principal of the Healthy Start Academy, praised the work of the medical students at the academy and expressed appreciation from the school’s faculty, staff and students.

“It’s an excellent opportunity for the medical students because they will learn something about Durham and what Durham has to offer through its community,” Danner says. “It also gives the school an opportunity to establish rapport with future health practitioners in a way that will encourage them to want to give back to the community and hopefully volunteer in the community throughout their school years and afterwards. Our teachers will also have the opportunity to concentrate on academics and professional development instead of classroom setup with the opening of school.”

Danner challenged the medical students to interact with Durham youth and serve as role models. “These youth really need positive role models,” he says. “There’s no greater way to do that than to volunteer. Volunteers know how it is to give from the heart.”

Can also be found at: http://inside.duke.edu/article.php?IssueID=153&ParentID=14205