When Brown students work in local hospitals, "textbooks come to life," according to Mark Zimmerman, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior. Undergraduates find many ways to bring what they learn in the classroom into the community through internships, research, volunteering, translating and advocacy work at local hospitals.
Charlotte Rocker '06 spends 14 to 20 hours a week at Rhode Island Hospital working with Zimmerman and colleagues on a self-report scale for identifying remission in depressed psychiatric outpatients. Rocker first worked there last summer as an intern for the Rhode Island Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Services project at RIH.
That internship program "allows undergrads, more or less, to join our ongoing clinical research projects," Zimmerman said. Students observe and learn about evaluations and clinical work, and they are increasingly given more responsibilities and opportunities.
"Undergrads feel respected," Zimmerman said. "They are viewed as an integral part of the team."
After completing the internship, last semester Rocker continued to volunteer twice a week at RIH. This semester, Rocker is the lead author for a paper she will present next month at the American Psychiatric Association Conference in Atlanta.
A good deal of Rocker's work involves interacting directly with patients.
"There's a big difference between taking Professor Hayden's Abnormal Psych class and clinically seeing these people present with disorders," Rocker said. "When you read about it, (different diagnoses) seem clear, but here you see how fuzzy the diagnoses can be."
Andrew Baum '07 volunteered in the Intensive Care Unit of Hasbro Children's Hospital last summer as part of his work for BC 7: "Cost Versus Care." Associate Dean for Medical Education Stephen Smith, who teaches the course, said that his class stresses the importance of "service learning in the field, whether that be in a hospital, clinic, the Boys and Girls club." The idea, Smith said, "is to take theory and apply it to the real world."
For about 10 years, Smith and his teaching assistants have made personal visits to potential agencies during the summer. In the fall, students pick from a list of locations and "hit the ground running," Smith said.
Though Hasbro Children's Hospital was not on the list, Baum was interested in working there and contacted Rachel Shields, the pediatric volunteer coordinator for Hasbro. They arranged a weekly four-hour shift.
Shields said students have the option to volunteer in the ICU, the Emergency Department, the Ambulatory Outpatient Clinics or the Recovery Room. Volunteers can also choose to participate in the Pediatric Preoperative Pro-gram, which helps prepare children for surgery. Students might also help with clerical tasks or work at the Family Help Desk, providing lower-income families with information on topics such as health insurance, food stamps, housing and referrals.
Shields said most Brown students who volunteer are not at Hasbro because of a class.
Students tend to come in saying they plan to go into medicine or enjoy working with children, Baum said.
As a volunteer, Baum said he found the rules about patient confidentiality frustrating at times. He was told to entertain the children and could not ask them where they were from or why they were in the hospital, he said.
These prohibitions, Baum said, "prevent you from forming close relationships with patients. It's limited - we were told not to give them 'false encouragement.' "
Shields said, however, that patients often readily offer information about their lives.
For his final project, Baum took the journal notes he had recorded after each shift and dictated them onto CDs.
Smith said he has found that "the journals are extremely moving" at times. The relevance of these personal reflections in an academic setting means that the learning "affects the heart and mind, not just the mind," he said.
Baum enjoyed the volunteer aspect of class but said he wonders how having this academic purpose or "assignment" lingering in the back of the mind might affect the volunteer experience. "Because we had to keep a journal, which wasn't (necessarily) a bad thing, the consensus (in class) was that we went into it looking for an experience instead of just enjoying it. ... We were looking for, 'How does this affect me?' "
For example, a student who cleaned up toys might report that "it helped me with my organizational skills," Baum said.
Baum said that he felt more "a part of the action" shadowing a physician for the class BC 152: "Emergency Medical Systems." Baum said that as opposed to occasionally feeling "in the way" as he had with past volunteering, the doctors strongly communicated an interest in the students and their abilities. "One doctor asked me, 'Can you speak Spanish?' " Baum said, "And I can't, but had I, that would have been really cool."
Rebecca Khezri '06 has served as a sexual abuse advocate for over a year. Her duties involve being on call and then reporting to hospitals or police stations to help an individual "who may not have someone who can advocate for them."
Khezri said she is trained to provide the victim with an understanding of her resources and treatment options and to serve as a mediator between physician, patient and police.
Khezri got involved as a result of her involvement with two Brown groups - the Coalition Against Relationship Abuse, run by the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, and the Domestic Abuse Advocacy Project, run by the Swearer Center for Public Service. The two groups work closely together, she said, and help connect students with organizations that will train them for advocacy work.
Khezri was trained by the Sexual Assault and Trauma Center in Providence and has since used that knowledge to train students at Brown. "I bring whatever I learn there here," she said. Khezri hopes that more Brown students will become involved, noting that this work involves facing "a lot of obstacles we don't (usually) see at Brown."
Khezri said she has been surprised by both the "good and bad" in her work as an advocate. Though she had already seen the difficulty victims often have getting help and support from the Providence Police, she said she has been surprised at the "amazingly helpful" nursing staff at Women & Infants Hospital.
She also said that working directly with "a different population" is an important supplement to her Brown education. "What we learn in a classroom has its own place, but that needs to be reinforced," she said. "You can talk about ethics in class, but when you're in the (emergency department), it's completely different."
"It's real, it's not theoretical," Khezri said.
