COVID-19 put important summer internships on hold for many students, but not for ETSU’s Student Government Association President Shivam Patel.
Patel completed a two-month internship with Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit organization that brings healthcare to areas in need.
“They provide three basic services: dental, medical and vision,” said Patel. “So, they will have doctors from around the area who volunteer for the weekend to give prescriptions for glasses, to do dental care, which ranges anywhere from an extraction to just a cleaning, and they provide medical care.”
Patel said RAM pop-up clinics typically happen in Appalachia, but that RAM also visits areas in need in places like Texas, the Midwest and sometimes even other countries.
“Most of the time what you’ll see is not many people use the medical,” said Patel. “It’s mostly dental and vision, because those are the things that aren’t typically covered by health insurance.”
Patel spent two months in Rockford, Tennessee, where he spent most of his internship learning how to successfully put together and run a RAM pop-up clinic from start to finish.
“A lot of my work was to help the chief operations officer develop standard operating procedures and a kind of RAM guidebook of how clinic operations should run,” said Patel.
As part of his internship, Patel was also able to assist with COVID-19 testing.
“I got to go up to Louisville, Kentucky, to help with COVID-19 testing,” said Patel. “So, I did that for an entire weekend and helped swab test hundreds of people.”
While this summer was Patel’s first internship with RAM, it was not his first experience with the organization. Patel first began to volunteer with RAM last fall at a pop-up clinic in Gray, Tennessee.
“I just kind of fell in love with what was happening,” said Patel. “They had volunteers and they serviced hundreds of people, and I got to help out with vision lines and to run the autorefractor to help get people prescriptions.”
Patel said that along with learning the ins and outs of operating a RAM clinic, he also learned a lot about collectivism.
“I think it’s a huge thing,” said Patel. “I love doing the ongoing volunteering and to work with my hands. I think its really important to learn the background of organizations, and nonprofits especially, and figure out what kind of paperwork has to go into it to make it start up and kind of keep it running.”
