What I did on my summer vacation
For the last week, I’ve been at the OU School of Community Medicine Summer Institute here in Tulsa, which is described in the following paragraph from their website:
“The OU School of Community Medicine inaugurated one of the most innovative education programs in the nation with the School of Community Medicine Summer Institute. The five-day program gathers first year medical and physician students, faculty from a range of professions and community leaders for an immersion in community medicine and Oklahoma’s health care needs.
The Summer Institute curriculum is creative, thought-provoking and engaging, taking attendees out of a traditional classroom and into the community to experience health care from the patient’s, not the physician’s perspective.”
Fascinating experience, and the attending faculty will be continuing to meet once a month to work on some of the projects that came out of the Institute, I think. I enjoyed meeting people that I normally wouldn’t get the chance to talk to, and going places I normally don’t (and won’t, if I’m lucky, though the issue of “situational poverty” was pretty eye-opening.) I was also involved in a hit-and-run accident on my way home from the Institute one evening, and the whole issue of uninsured drivers and some of the reasons for that (especially here in Tulsa) are a lot clearer to me now. One other thing I learned is that the social work students in my group were way more knowledgeable about specific community information resources relevant to the at-risk local residents of Tulsa than most of our library students are likely to be, so that’s something to work on.
A parting thought, though: we had a so-called “poverty lunch” one day (what $2.50 buys you for a meal), and I’m pretty sure that Spam isn’t all that popular with people on food stamps, either….
