At the conclusion of this week, I really feel as though I'm fully in the swing of things. I've been going back and forth between the clinic in Mill Valley and FAP in the city, and it's been great. As I become more acquainted with the staff of the Forensic AIDS Project, I continue to learn more and more about the organization. It's extremely impressive.
Although I am technically working for Jail Health Services (JHS), FAP is my home base. As a subset of JHS, they have been extremely helpful in debriefing me with the health care services that are available to inmates in addition to HIV/AIDS care. Medical students are a regular part of the JHS/FAP team, and they hold numerous focus groups in the prisons to assess the prisoners' opinions of the care they receive. I pretty much spent my entire Monday reading the summaries, findings, and suggestions of these focus groups. The next step will be scheduling interviews will various JHS personnel.
Tuesday morning I was at the clinic with Poliana. We have yet to receive any word from our web designer about the programming changes so I contacted him to follow up. I was able to draft a partial "Clinical Social Work Services: Basic Referral Guidelines" procedure before I had to head to the city.
My afternoon at FAP was spent preparing for the interviews I mentioned previously. I scheduled interviews for today (Friday) with Dr. Joe Goldenson, Director of JHS, Isela Gonzalez, HIV Prevention Services Coordinator of FAP, and Isaiah Hurtado, Lead Case Manager of FAP. I drafted up a multitude of questions and then organized them according to the individual I would be interviewing. I am so thankful for the News & Professional Feature Writing course I just had this past semester. Having quite a few interviews under my belt from writing my stories is so helpful.
Wednesday I was back at the clinic. The variety of work I'm doing is making the time go so fast. I spent most of my day there continuing to prepare for my interviews on Friday. The environment at the clinic is much more accommodating for efficient work. (There are about 7 staff members per room at FAP.) I really appreciate the flexibility Dr. Estes, Poliana, and Kate are allowing me. Once all of my interviews are conducted, I probably won't have to go into the city at all. I love the ownership I get to take in these projects. It's on me to develop a successful, beneficial end product.
I also began to brush up on my iMovie skills. I've used the program before, but I want to be able to use it to its full potential for the orientation DVD. I plan on voice or film recording each interview on my iPhone so I've been practicing my steady hand at that as well. It's really quite amazing that I have all these tech resources right at my fingertips.
Thursday I was at the clinic again, and I spent the day divided amongst a few things. Poliana and I spent a good amount of time editing some policies I had some questions about. She then gave me a bit of time to put the finishing touches of my final paper for the Gambia. One of the other clinicians, Dr. Jackie Tulsky just returned from vacation, and she, in a word, is amazing. She is the kindest, most down to earth physician I've ever interacted with. She spent an hour and a half with just one patient to answer all of her questions. Dr. Tusky is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She herself, went to med school at PITT so we bonded over Pennsylvania for a bit. I conducted my first interview with her for the clinicians' bios for the TSC website. I really appreciated the opportunity to ask her about her past training and experience and learn a bit about how she got to where she is today.
And finally today, I conducted my interviews with the FAP staff members and Dr. Goldenson. They all went extremely well, but I'm quickly realizing there are SO many different topics and approaches I can take to the orientation video. Everyone I spoke to today had their own ideas about what should be highlighted. I'm going to schedule more interviews next week and then begin to develop my outline and script.
I also got a tour of a few of the jails this afternoon. I was in the male and female housing units, the medical care unit, the psych unit, and the medical clinic. I sat in on an orientation for new female prisoners and heard the short presentation FAP staff gives about the opportunity to get tested. I was extremely impressed when about half the group expressed an interest in HIV, Hep B, and STD testing.
I am completely dumbfounded by the amount of information that's coming at me on a daily basis. If you had asked me about the health services available in jails 3 weeks ago, I would have had absolutely nothing to say due to sheer ignorance. There is a whole other sector of health services that out there I hadn't ever considered being a part of. I absolutely cannot wait to talk to more people and continue to learn about what's available for prisoners. For a majority of those incarcerated, jail is the only place they receive medical care.
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