Service-learning

Experience 1: Volunteering at Pettigrew Rehabilitation Centre 

Supervisor: Terry Louis

Dates: August 2023 - December 2023, 2 hours a week

This rehabilitation centre has permanent and temporary residents who need round the clock nursing care due to their ailments. I have spoken to multiple residents about their lives, their experience in a hospice centre, told them about myself and my aspiration, and heard their advice.

This has reminded me to keep in mind the real people we are trying to engineer better medicines for, and to be ethical and considerate of people with different background, beliefs and abilities when trying to develop new technologies.  

Experience 2: RAM volunteer

2 clinics 

Remote Area Medical is a national organization that holds free clinics in rural areas for people to get visual, medical and dental care. These people have often not seen a health professional in years due to cost and accessibility amongst other reasons. RAM has a Duke chapter, and through this I have travelled to a few clinics to volunteer at check in, check out, sterilization and cleaning on the dental floor, and aiding with cutting lenses for prescriptions.  I have helped take down clinics and have seen the way these large pieces of equipment are packed away into  trucks. Through shadowing dentists, I have heard the adjustments that have to be made in procedures due to lack of resources.

These experiences have shown me the issue of accessibility of fancy pieces of medical equipment, and how they can be made to be more compact, and transportable in order to provide care for more people.