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Greetings from the new SAAO eboard at MSUCOM! This is the first Still Point article that we are submitting after the transition, so we are very excited to bring some updates from MSUCOM.
First of all, we had a blast at Convo this year!! I’m not just talking about the sunny days at Kentucky (while there was still snow in MI) or the bourbon, but the joy of learning OMM techniques from so many different DO’s and meeting DO students from all over the country who share our passion in OMM. When I asked Chelsy Mahon, our current President, and James Choi, our treasurer, about their experiences at Convocation, they responded as follows -
“I loved going to convocation. It expanded my knowledge about OMM and has benefited my med school education. It's hard to pick a favorite part but I really enjoyed evening with the stars. I'm proud to be president of SAAO over the next year and look forward to many of the outreach projects we want to have. OMM is one of the great tools that make osteopathic physicians able to provide compassionate care for their patients.” - Chelsy
“I really liked going around and seeing all the OMM docs work their magic at the Night with the Stars. This event helped me learn a lot more about different OMM treatments.” - James
Also, during Convocation, we met some fellow students from other schools who are interested to set up more community service events at their school. MSUCOM has a student-run OMM clinic, and our current clinical coordinator, Scott Klein, asked me to send the following message to any chapters who are interested to set up similar clinics.
“We run a student OMM clinic out of a wing in our school. There is very little overhead cost to the clinic because we do only OMM and no primary care, so we really do not require supplies for the patient appointments. This wing is already set up with small patient rooms with OMM tables. We see patients once a week on Thursday evenings. We have two appointment times, 5:00p and 6:30p, and we see 5 patients per time. So we see a total of 10 patients per week. There are 10 students that work each night plus 2 student coordinators that work the front desk. Each patient has two students that work on them. We have a physician adviser that works with us every week plus a few of the NMM/OMT residents. The clinic is free to the public. Our patient base comes from students, Michigan State employees and the community as a whole. We do not give out any prescriptions or referrals. If the physicians think that the patient needs any radiology studies, prescriptions, physical therapy, etc. -- they will make a recommendation for it and tell the patient they need to go see their primary care doctor for the prescription, referral, etc. A typical appointment for the patient will look like the following: - patient arrives and fills out any necessary paperwork (if new patient, then they have about 8 pages of PMH, PSH, CC, consent, etc.) -patient and 2 student workers go into room and students will take a brief history -students will treat patient with OMM ( muscle energy, myofascial, counterstrain, etc. but no HVLA unless a doctor is in the room) - after the students are done treating, they will go out and present their case to the attending physician and talk about what they have done to treat so far - the doctor and 2 students will go back into patient room and the doctor will treat anything further that the students have missed. The clinic is set up in such a way that it is considered to be an elective class for 1st/2nd year medical students. This way, the students are all covered by our school's insurance policy. If anyone is interested to set up similar clinic, I would love to talk to you and share some information. You can reach me at our chapter email at [email protected].”
Luna Chen, National Representative
Chelsy Mahon, President
Scott Klein, Student Clinic Coordinator
James Choi, Treasurer