Week 5

Sara Johnston
8 March 2007
MIDS 201

Journal Entry #5

I went to the Clinic on Wednesday. I hoped that when I showed up they would have enough things to do to keep me busy for a couple of hours. The Volunteer Coordinator had returned from her vacation, so that gave me some hope. Upon my arrival at 1 PM, everyone was eating Charlie’s Chicken. The first thing they did when they saw me was instruct me to eat. After that, I looked around for something to do. Because it was not an adult medical clinic day, I figured there would just be a bunch of paperwork and things to file. I was correct. Each month, volunteers start a new sign-in sheet. I was assigned to put the sheets from February into the volunteer folders. I punched holes in them so they would fit in the brackets in the folders. Once I started opening the folders, I saw that the majority of the old records sheets were not in order and were not held in place by the brackets. The folders were grouped by last name, but not alphabetically in order in each group. So, being the super-organized Honors student that I am, I put all the folders in alphabetical order, and punched holes in all of the time sheets and put those in order in the folders. That pretty much occupied my two hours.

One older volunteer, probably in her 60s, was pulling charts for the next day. I asked her if she wanted any help, and she rudely told me that we would probably just end up tripping over each other. As I was filing the sign-in sheets, she was putting the charts in stacks for the times of their appointments: 3, 3:30, 4 and so on. Instead of just stacking them with stickie notes on each of them with the time of their appointments, she was putting on the clips with the order of the patients, which is not supposed to be done until the patients are there and triaged. When she was told that she needed to take all the clips off, she complained that someone had told her earlier to not put stickie notes on the charts. I had the smug satisfaction in knowing that if I had pulled the charts, I would have done it correctly. That’s what that old lady gets for thinking that a younger person would not be of any use.

Wednesdays are dental clinic days. As I was walking down the hall looking for Kathy, the volunteer coordinator, I heard a familiar voice: Steve Menke, the dentist that day. I know him because my brother and his sons played sports together, and I have been skiing with him through a mutual family. I stuck my head in and said hi. He and his assistant were putting stitches in a girl’s mouth. There was a girl in the other chair, waiting her turn. She looked terrified as she watched them stitch up the girl’s mouth and wipe blood off of their tools on her protective paper bib. I think she should have been kept in the waiting room, not watching what was about to be done to her. I had my wisdom teeth removed last year. If I had had to watch it done to someone before the procedure was performed on me, I would have run from the room screaming.