Month: August 2018

STEP Trip

OSU has a second year program called STEP, where if we write a proposal, we can get funded of up to $2,000. I used my money to go to City Impact, a place where I’ve done missions work in high school with my youth group. A couple of friends and I came back. Two of my friends did administrative work and helped the organization catch up on their paperwork, and my other friend and I volunteered at the health clinic. On the first day, we took vitals (I learned how to take blood pressure, O2 saturation, breathing/heart rate, height, weight, and temperature). On the second day, we got to shadow and help carry out any tasks with the head family doctor, Dr. Clifford Lau.

We got to see his patient interactions, and see how missions work and being a medical professional could tie in. We got to interact with the patients and for one patient, we gave her a foot bath to help treat her pain. Even though I didn’t get to shadow a dentist during my time there, it was neat to see medical interactions.

Total hours: 11.5 hours

-Thursday and Friday; 4 hours on Thursday, 7.5 hours on Friday

–> 9am – 2pm (with 1 hour lunch break)

–> 9am – 5pm (with 30 minute lunch break)

VAW Dental Trip

7/15/18-7/28/18

This summer, I got to serve on a service trip in the Dominican Republic. This was through Ohio State’s VAW Dental chapter. We went to the Dominican Republic and worked with a group of students from UPitt. We set up a free health clinic in a small town near Jarabacoa, and for a week we did the following jobs:

-shadowed and assisted one of the dentists

–> the extent of assisting was suctioning the patient’s mouth, helping take x-rays, and retrieving instruments for the doctor

-sterilization (sterilizing all the instruments)

-supplies (setting up prophy cleaning trays, restoration trays, extraction trays)

-vitals (glucose levels, blood pressure, temperature)

-intake (recording down patient information)

This was a challenging trip for me as it taught me how to interact and communicate with people that I normally don’t associate with, and especially the locals. I never knew Spanish, and the locals didn’t know English, so it was a challenge (but a good one!) to communicate. The dentist I shadowed (Dr. Noelia) also taught my partner and I some Spanish phrases to say to the patients. We spent one week at clinic, and then the second week exploring Dominican Republic.

Total Volunteering Hours: 30 hours

–>Monday – Saturday, 9am-3pm (1 hour lunch break) = 5 hours

(Shadowing Hours): 10/30 hours

–> Tuesday and Wednesday = 10 hours