What I have Learned so Far

Life in Detroit so far has been a very interesting journey. I think the settling in stage is complete and my roommates and I have transitioned to actually living as residents of Detroit. At this point for me "living as a resident" revolves around working at Cabrini; however this will expand as the year progresses.

A day in the life of Siobhan three months ago, as a CSB senior, included large amounts of motivation to get myself to class, seven nights a week conducting a social life at Sal's establishment, experimenting with Arabic hookah methods, and trying to "complete" the majority of my homework assignments (it should be noted that I had my dog Brewer along with me for every moment which adds an interesting animal element).

Although there is a high probability I will refer to my senior year of college as my glory days, life as a MV has add a pinch of responsibility to my professional and social diet. I am to report to work at 10:30 am (which I have discovered is the perfect time for me to start my day). My alarm goes off at 9:00 am - I hope you are all sitting when you read this next section, I know its sounds unbelievable but its the truth (those of you who know me understand that hygienic and presentation was not a priority to me during college) - and SHOWER, blow dry my hair, put on make up, wear REAL clothes (no sweat pants and hat for me), and even have time left for breakfast. It's quite amazing I cannot lie I was worried myself that I would never be able to hold a real job because of my previous habits.

This is the big news - I walk to work - its hard to believe but I do it. After living across from campus last year and driving to school I felt it was time to review my beliefs in saving the environment and how I was going to put that into action.

If you did not already know I am the Administrative Assistant at St. Frances Cabrini Clinic. I have my own office that houses all of the medical records, my own desk, recycling station, computer, and pictures of all my loved ones back home. I am the first person you see when you walk into the clinic; which can be a good thing or a bad thing. I take on many faces as the Administrative Assistant at Cabrini. I collaborate mainly with Sr. Mary Ellen who seems to provide me with a new task nearly everyday. On Mondays and Fridays there is no clinic so this is when I work on projects such as institutionalizing the clinic. As of right now I am working on a "Vendor Book" which lists all of the companies that Cabrini uses to order supplies and service our medical and communication machines. At first I thought that this project would take me a week; I was misunderstood. There are a lot of vendors that keep our clinic running, Office Max, AllComm, heating/air conditioning and fifty other companies that I don't have time or the patience to list. I have accepted that this will be a work in progress for the entire time I am at the clinic.

Part of my orientation to the clinic was to meet the over 100 volunteers that keep our establishment in business and Sr. Mary Ellen came up with a very clever way for me to accomplish this task. I was given the contact information of all the volunteers and every time we have clinic I have to check in with each volunteer to make sure their contact information is correct (it hasn't been updated in a very long time). By doing this I have to introduce myself and am able to put faces to names. To be completely honest I don't think I could be in the presence of better people. All of the volunteers are absolutely wonderful and just good people to the core it is an honor to work with them.

Other upcoming projects that I will be involved in is writing concrete policies for the clinic and providing every member of staff with their own copy - to eliminate confusion and to better our consistency with patients. I am also Sr. Mary Ellen's right hand in the process of putting together our annual fundraiser, "Gathering of Friends". This fundraiser brings in half of the $260,000 it takes to run the clinic every year; last year they raised $96,000. I am excited to be apart of this project and to become familiar with the organizations and corporations that donate to such an amazing cause.

I would label those my two main projects as of right now however there are little day to day projects that I am working on as well. For example, Transformers 3 is filming across the road from Cabrini Clinic - yes my friends Patrick Dempsey will be across the road from me shooting a major action seen in the parking lot. I have been put in charge of writing an article about this event - they start filming after Labor Day I haven't decided what my strategy collecting information will be, however my ultimate goal is to meet the man himself "McDreamy".

Clinics are our obviously busy and more stressful days of the week. It has been a challenge as well to figure out how exactly is the most efficient way to run our clinic. Conducting a free clinic is not similar to conducting an insurance based clinic. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our medical clinics and they are walk-in only you cannot call in to register to see the doctor or to get refills you must get to the clinic during registration time. This is wear it gets messy, for example, Thursday we have two clinics registration for the afternoon clinic begins at noon however people start getting to the clinic around 10:30-11 and this presents a problem. If I sign in the patients as they arrive (which would be the easiest for me) by the time it reaches noon we have reached capacity of the patients we can serve at that clinic. On the other hand if I make them wait until noon there are 13 people in the waiting room and a very large line develops and this causes privacy issues when I am having the patients confirm their phone numbers and addresses (because of our patients income levels and general situations most of them move a lot and their numbers change frequently). On top of all of this there is the issue of who got their first and before who. What the patients don't understand is if they have a refill and were the first to register they are not going to be serviced first because the pharmacists have to fill their medications, meanwhile they are seeing other people being serviced who need to see the doctor. What they don't get is that those people who are going into see the doctor come out and have to wait for their meds and their medications are the last ones to be filled. It presents a big problem and a lot of animosity gets thrown my way. I have learned to present this general line to them "it doesn't matter what you are hear for the wait is going to be 2 to 3 hours". The clinic right now is considering implementing a refill only clinic which would eliminate the bottleneck the pharmacy becomes - it looks like a promising option however we will see if it is a lasting one. Besides the wait time I have established a number system to help alleviate the tension that accompanies registration. As the patients arrive at the clinic they receive a number, depending on the number of volunteers staffed gauges the number of patients we are able to see. Each doctor can handle around 15 patients so if there are 2 doctors on staff you would assume that we could service 30 patients. However, there is the pharmacy to think about because they have to fill all of the refills and the patients medications who have seen the doctors; our usual number is 25 patients per clinic. Hence, I have 25 numbers and when it is noon I start with number one if the person is not present when their number is called they must get a new number because I am not making the others wait or hunting them down. This provides a sense of privacy to each patient we serve. After I run out of numbers the clinic cannot serve anymore people. This is the hardest part of my job, turning people away from the health care they need. They come in with there empty pill bottle and beg for medication. Depending on how the clinic is flowing we can make some exceptions especially if we are dealing with a diabetic or someone with high blood pressure. However we cannot do this for everyone on a regular basis and it is the most heart wrenching part of the job.

In all honesty St. Frances Cabrini Clinic is all that our patients really have; especially for those who are homeless and simply have nothing. For example we had a male patient walk-in to the clinic to pick up his medications on a non clinic day. I let him in, asked him what he needed that day, and he could hardly get out through the tears that he was at the clinic to pick up refills. He had been in a domestic dispute with his wife and had no one to turn to expect the staff at the clinic.

We try to serve the homeless however they are very hard to follow up with because they usually don't have any contact information, are moving day to day, and do not have the proper transportation to get to the clinic. We live very close to the Greyhound Bus Station and because of that there is a large amount of homeless in our area. Every night I see at least six to ten homeless people out on the streets; I live six blocks away. There is a school located directly behind the clinic and there is an alcove where the back door is to the school and you can count on at least one if not 2 people sleeping there. Sr. Mary Ellen explained to me that they school had installed a light there to deter the homeless from sleeping there; because in the morning the children will be stepping over them to get into school. However, the homeless are a very persistent type of people and will go where ever they feel safe in order to make it through the night. The shelters are not safe in the city so many homeless will choose the street over a shelter a majority of them will live in the abandoned houses that line the city streets of Detroit. There are a lot of burned out houses though due to the homeless trying to keep warm by starting small fires in the home. Mary Ellen explained to me that their was an incident in Detroit where a house had caught fire and a body had been found. It was unidentifiable and there was no other identification on the body except for a Cabrini Clinic pill bottle that stated his name.

After hearing this story it really had an impact on what kind of role we play in the peoples lives that we serve; it's truly amazing.