Open Door Health Center - Service Learning
The Open-Door Health Center is a clinic in Mankato, MN that offers medical, dental, and behavioral health services. This clinic is not like any ordinary clinic, though. As the name implies, the ODHC has a mission to make healthcare affordable for everyone, no matter their race, religion, income status, what language they speak, etc.
I was fortunate enough to land a volunteer position at the ODHC for the fall 2019 semester, where I earned 3 honors credits through the Service-Learning Practicum course. I specifically helped the front desk staff with daily tasks such as making copies and helping to check patients in, and also assisted nursing staff input patient information into what was called "Health Dynamics physical charts" on the computer.
This experience was more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. I learned SO much about this clinic, their mission, leadership, cultural diversity, and more! One aspect that I really enjoyed about this service-learning project was the opportunity to learn from the two very different leadership styles and further develop my own philosophy of leadership. I worked with lots of different people: nurses, administration, scheduling, doctors and patients. Each of these groups of people function differently, and I realized that these differences are unique to what these people need to accomplish at the ODHC in order for it to run smoothly and serve its people best. I saw some really awesome leadership roles, and some really not so awesome ones.
Working alongside my volunteer supervisor helped me to meet leadership levels 2 and 3 in both 'values' and 'teams.' I met level 2 in 'values' specifically when I had a hard morning at ODHC with a very angry management staff. I had made a plethora of copies for her, of which all came out crooked from the machine, and was yelled at to redo them. I remember going home and sitting down to seriously think about how I responded to that strong "leadership," and how I compare to it and poorly responded to it by sulking; this was a big reflection moment for me. I met 'values' level 3 by critiquing this staff's leadership style within my reflections for the Honors Service-Learning course; I tried to come up with better and worse ways that this staff member could have dealt with the situation at hand. I believe that I met 'teams' level 2 when I started out at ODHC; I met with multiple different groups of people to listen to what they expected from me as their part time volunteer and went home to reflect upon what my roles were in those different groups. I was there to aid the nurses in inputting charts, but also to be a social portion of the front desk administration. I met 'teams' level 3 by working alongside those two groups of people and collaborating with them to achieve my tasks. Sometimes I didn't have access to a chart that I needed, so I would join one of the nurses to get it sorted out. Sometimes I had troubles with the copier machines, so I worked together with admin to hurdle over those bumps to get my tasks done.
Overall throughout this experience, I learned more about my core values as a leader, and what poor leadership values can look like in specific situations. I also learned about what it takes to work efficiently as a leader in different group settings.