Washington Circle park
My name is Samantha Scherner and I have the pleasure of living in the beautiful town of Ridgway, Colorado. This past week I have been interning at the Rodham Institute, embedded in the George Washington University Campus. The Rodham Institute promotes health equity throughout the 8 wards of Washington DC by educating the residents in the city.
The chaos began on Saturday when I flew into DC late afternoon. On Sunday my cousin and I drove into the city from where they live, Bethesda, and took a look at the building that I would be doing my internship at. I got up bright and early Monday morning, the time change made it feel like 4:45 am, and we drove to the GW Medical Faculty Associates building. There I was greeted by Sara Mutnick, the director of health equity education, who gave me an introduction to the kind of work the Rodham Institute does. Then I was joined by another intern named Stephanie and we started work on a new program called 2018 for 2018. This programs goal is to get 2,018 people trained in hands only CPR in 2018. After lunch we went to shadow medical residents at the clinic as they saw patients and updated charts.
On Tuesday we worked more on the 2018 for 2018 project and called community centers a churches in wards 7 and 8 to see if they would host the event. We then folded pamphlets for the See the City you Serve, which is an event to show the new medical residents around the DC area, specifically focusing on wards 7 and 8. These areas are extremely underserved and the goal of the event is to show the interns where the majority of their patients will come from as there is only one hospital to serve 79,000 people. We drove around the places we were planning on going for the event and it was really eye opening to see all the people living in those conditions. The statistics about wards 7 and 8 are staggeringly higher when it comes to cancer deaths and diabetes rates.
Wednesday morning I went to the clinic again and stayed there until lunch and I talked to the residents about medical school and undergraduate school when it comes to becoming a doctor. I ate lunch at the park in Washington circle and after I ate we worked on more projects for the See the City you Serve event and then more on the 2018 for 2018 project.
Me and some other interns with the president of the Unity Health Care clinic
Thursday was the actual See the City you Serve event and in the morning we put together papers for the people on the different buses. After lunch we went down to the medical school and met up with all the interns and took them to United Medical Center, the only hospital in wards 7 and 8. There was a panel that answered questions from the residents and gave them advice for the time they would be spending at the hospital. It was good to know that the interns now know what conditions their patients live in because its a huge part of the social determinants of health.
On Friday we went to a networking event in Anacostia where the clinics including Unity Health Care, around the area have introduced something called telemed, where patients can connect to their doctors electronically so the gap of transportation is closed as there are more clinics than hospitals.
Lunch at the Chesapeake Bay
This weekend we had a very chill Saturday and then a family dinner later on, and on Sunday we went to the Chesapeake Bay to eat lunch. After that we went to the Incredibles 2 at a very cool theater. The week was overwhelming as getting used to city life is hard, there are way more people than in Ridgway and everyone walks fast. Ive gotten used to the time change, finally, and I’m ready to do more with this internship.
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