C.A.R.E. Clinic Visits New Orleans: A Volunteer's Perspective

     

  On August 29nd, one of the many mobile C.A.R.E. clinics from the National Association of Free Clinics came to the Ernest Memorial Convention Center in New Orleans. Providing kidney screening, pregnancy tests, health education, and urgent medical care, this event was purely for the benefit of the many uninsured people in New Orleans. Hosted in a large hall in the Memorial Convention Center, its many carefully sectioned medical stations and shiny equipment was an exciting sight. The clinic work force consisted of hundreds of volunteer nurses, doctors, and people simply willing to help out for the benefit of their community. After the volunteers arrived at 9 in the morning and went through orientation, the clinic opened its doors at 11 AM to the public and stayed open well into the night. Soon, the giant hall was filled with people seeking medical care- men, women, children, the elderly. Each volunteer had a job assignment and knew what he or she was supposed to be doing, Unfortunately, as the day wore on it was plain to see that the clinic's system had flaws.

     Poor communication between volunteers performing one task and the other were rampant. If a folder wasn't properly labeled or the time of the patients' arrival wasn't written down, confused and frustrated volunteers would find themselves bringing people to the wrong place and have to double back to get the correct information.Often patients would be lead to a medical station to be treated by a doctor, only to discover that it was already full and be have to be led back to the small cramped waiting area. Some nurses and/or doctors would come back from the restroom or from a break and take a new patient, only to find they had forgotten there was already a patient waiting inside their medical station. Volunteers would be told to collect a certain number of patients from a large main waiting area and then bring them to a specific waiting/treatment area called a pod (in this case, pod A) only to be scolded and/or chastised for not collecting the proper documents. Pod leaders, a sort of manager for each medical area, were stressed and often absent from managing the pod, leaving the largely untrained volunteers to organize hundreds of medical patients themselves. These mistakes, mostly driven by poor management, led to time consuming delays, longer waits for patients, and higher stress levels on volunteers.

      By the end of the shift at 3 PM, many volunteers were relieved to go and have their replacements take over for the night shift.

     Over the course of the day, what appeared to be nearly a thousand patients came and went through the Convention Center doors, some waiting several hours just to be seen by a doctor. Several times, a patient would appear needing to see the cardiologist or optometrist only to find that the doctor hadn't shown up or had taken an unscheduled break. Seeing as this was the C.A.R.E. clinic's third time coming to New Orleans, one would think that they'd have a smooth, well organized plan already in place for the management as well as patients. As one volunteer remarked at the end of the day, "This is New Orleans for you." Even though the day was stressful as well as physically and mentally tiring, many of the volunteers agreed that it was worth it to help the patients get the care they needed.

"It is not how much you do but how much love you put in the doing." Mother Theresa

-Photos to come later-