1st year of med school and community work

Little background: I’m a 1st year medical student in Uruguay, a tiny country at the bottom of South America. My country has recently had a major change in its health care system, which, although was always free, it did not reach 100% of the population, and like the majority of healthcare systems in the world, it was not based in primary healthcare (PHC) or promoting health and preventing disease. (You can read more about PHC here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_health_care)

When the healthcare system changed, the medical education also changed, to adapt to the new system. And let me tell you something—it is awesome! 

Throughout our clinical years, and since the very beginning, we are divided into groups of 28-30 students and given a poor, sometimes rural community to work with. It is our entire responsibility to go to the community, get to know the people there, the clinic doctor, the schools, understand the politics, the needs, and come up with a plan to improve it. 

First year of medical school is pretty boring. We are cramming our brains full of facts, when we really got here because we wanted to work with people. Help people. Well, with this program, going to the community once a week, gives us the opportunity to do just that. We learn how to see people as a whole, to discover all the things that influence their health, not just to see their disease. We start out by doing an epidemiological survey of the population – I confess that I had no idea what that meant. I’d heard the word “epidemiology” before, but if I’m honest, I had no real understanding of what it was. Now, not only do I know what it is, and why it is important, I am actually doing it myself.

They have a pizzeria!!

My community has a population of 2,852 people, only 2 paved roads, one tiny clinic open from 8am-6pm Monday through Friday, with one doctor and one nurse. You know what? They are **happy** to see us come. They want our help. They’re also happy to teach us. We get first-hand experience, and start helping people from day one. 

This is the CAIF- "Centro de Atención a la Infancia y a la Familia" -- help center for children and families.

They get excited students with lots of energy and the desire to change the world. We’ll do health education talks, sexual education talks, we’re planning an exercise program, we want to resurrect their football team (which died last year for lack of participation), we’ll go to the youth center and help the kids there, and to the primary schools and treat the kids for parasites (apparently an appalling percentage of the kids here suffer from intestinal parasites). We get to do stuff, impact a whole community and see the results of our work. And to me, that’s what this med school thing is all about.

Bikes and a sign for a junk yard

So here’s my advice to you, if you’re in medical school or pre-med and planning on going to med school: go to a rural community. Find a little town close to where you live, go to the clinic there and talk to the doctor. Ask him if you can help. Get involved and really put your heart into it. Not only can you make a real impact in that community, you’ll get a lot of experience, you’ll be a better doctor, a better human, and if all of that weren't enough, I’m pretty sure it’ll look great in your resume.