Sameer Sood, SAAO Member Rowan-SOM
The question, “What is a DO?,” is too often asked of the minority of medical students that are lucky enough to attend an Osteopathic institution. This screams a tragic lack of awareness and thus a gross underutilization of our skills in OMT and whole body medicine by the patients we would like to serve. Last December, this awareness issue prompted a group of passionate-for-change students to collaborate with our OMM department on solving it. Various meeting and discussions yielded one central idea: To start a Student-run Community OMM Clinic intent on spreading Osteopathic awareness among both the medical community and the patients we serve.
This idea began a movement that quickly gained popularity on campus. Not only were we founding a clinic, but a clinic framed around a cause. With this mission in mind, our group of about 20 students was able to design a custom-made clinic based on intuition and innovation rather than status quos.
Over the course of only six months, we overcame a number of obstacles which far exceeded the demands of our medical school curriculum. First, we secured our NeuroMusculoskeletal Institute facility and our OMM faculty, including our very own advisor and SAAO National Advisor, Dr. Sajid Surve, D.O., to be attendings at our Saturday morning clinic sessions. Legally, we obtained the stubborn approval of the clinic, student participation, patient participation and flyer approval which provided a thorough lesson in school politics and legalities that mere OMS-Is were never aware of. Next, we applied for an $8,000 Wakefern Food Corp grant and appealed to local State Osteopathic Physician groups so we could turn our clinic into a whole body facility that included OMT, wellness/health education, and exposure to overall Osteopathy. Lastly, the most critical aspect was our marketing focus. We did not want to randomly toss around flyers but instead, we personally targeted members of our community in order to “serve those who serve.” With this philosophy, not only do we get to give back to the firefighters, police officers, veterans, and nurses, who physically give to us, but we can also treat a high yield dysfunctional group that can really benefit from our trade and spread word of its efficacy.
All of our efforts, including three “test run” openings and 36 patients who were treated throughout the summer, culminated in our grand opening on September 9th, 2013. This was not only a day of celebration and reflection on everything we had accomplished, but also the first public exposure and treatment from our field to outside patients, including firefighters.
The grassroots have been planted – the next step is growth.
18