{"id":6013,"date":"2016-12-02T20:21:32","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T20:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6013"},"modified":"2016-12-02T20:22:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T20:22:00","slug":"utrgv-medical-students-get-their-first-shot-at-flu-shots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6013","title":{"rendered":"UTRGV Medical Students Get Their First Shot at Flu Shots"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"UTRGV<\/a>

UTRGV medical student Jared Eaves listens to the breathing of young Adolfo Tostado, held by medical student Veronica Trevi\u00f1o, during a recent visit to the Indian Hills community near Mercedes. It was the cohort\u2019s first experience working with patients, an opportunity they said was part of the reason they wanted to study at the UTRGV School of Medicine. Photo: David Pike\/UTRGV<\/p><\/div>\n

by Jennifer L. Berghom<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0More than a dozen medical students stood inside the multipurpose room at La Iglesia de los Hechos in Indian Hills, a community near Mercedes. They listened intently as Linda Nelson, an RN and senior director of clinical operations for the UTRGV School of Medicine, gave instructions on how to administer a flu shot.<\/p>\n

It would be the first time any of them would give an immunization shot to a patient; all their previous experience had been with oranges.<\/p>\n

The group, part of UTRGV\u2019s first cohort of medical students, were gathered Nov. 9 and another cohort would go the next day to St. Francis Xavier Cabrini Catholic Church in Las Milpas, south of Pharr, to get hands-on immunization experience.<\/p>\n

Students were under the supervision of faculty and staff from the School of Medicine, like Nelson; Dr. Eron Manusov, chair of the SOM\u2019s Department of Family and Preventative Medicine; Dr. Francisco Fernandez, professor of psychiatry in the SOM\u2019s Department of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Neurosciences; and other health care practitioners from the SOM.<\/p>\n

The medical school offered 100 immunization shots \u2014 50 in each community \u2014 on a first-come, first-served basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little bit surreal,\u201d said Danielle Feng, excited to be the first student to administer a flu shot.<\/p>\n

She and the other medical students were lined up around a table bearing trays with syringes, Band-Aids and rubbing alcohol pads. As each patient was brought in, a student would approach, ask health-related questions in Spanish, clean the patient\u2019s arm with the rubbing alcohol pad, and then administer the shot.<\/p>\n

Feng said it actually was easier to administer the shot to an actual human than the oranges they had practiced on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember, with the orange, all of the fluid would leak out immediately because we couldn\u2019t really hold it in,\u201d she said. \u201cFor this first patient, all of it went in pretty well. And when I pulled the syringe out, nothing came gushing out. I think, on the patient, the shot went very smoothly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson said having these first-year med students administer the shots is another example of how the UTRGV School of Medicine differs from many other medical schools: Most medical students don\u2019t get clinical experience until their third year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about the patient,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cIt helps to bond them with a real human being. The students get to actually do something. And they need to do something to apply what they\u2019ve learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students said they appreciate how uncommon it is for them to work with patients so early in their career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a really unique experience here,\u201d said Feng, who is from Plano. \u201cSome of my friends at other medical schools, they are in class all day and they don\u2019t get the chance to go out into the community like we do,\u201d<\/p>\n

Jared Eaves, a first-year medical student from Brownsville, said having the opportunity to interact with patients early on is the reason he chose UTRGV.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of us did decide to come here for that reason, that we\u2019re going out into the community right away. This is the perfect opportunity,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause it not only helps us, but it helps the community as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jennifer L. Berghom RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0More than a dozen medical students stood inside the multipurpose room at La Iglesia de los Hechos in Indian Hills, a community near Mercedes. They listened intently as Linda Nelson, an RN and senior director of clinical operations for the UTRGV School of Medicine, gave instructions on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6016,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions\/6016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}