UW students learn rural medical issues

Odessa Memorial Healthcare Center hosted four University of Washington job-shadow students on March 19-23. This is the first time that two boys and two girls came to Odessa. These students are interested in going into a variety of healthcare fields, and we have the opportunity to show them what rural medicine and rural life are like.

Huy Nguyen (Patrick) currently volunteers at UW Medical Center as both an escort and pharmacy assistant. Patrick knows that he would like to go into pharmacy and was able to spend his week with at Odessa Drug, our local pharmacy.

Rina Yan was born in Washington state. Her parents are from China/Taiwan. She is a first-year student at the UW and intends to major in public health. She was able to spend time with both providers in the clinic and with nursing service providers in the hospital.

Suhani Patel is a sophomore at the UW, where she is majoring in environmental health and thinking of a minor in business. She volunteers at a local homeless shelter and enjoys talking with the community about health care topics. She would like to become a physician's assistant and job-shadowed the clinic's providers and nursing staff.

Kai Zhu is a third-year student at the UW, and he plans to major in physiology. His reasons for wanting to job-shadow in a rural community were to understand the perspectives of people who are from rural communities and better understand the healthcare issues they face. He was able to job-shadow various departments and providers and spend some time at the pharmacy during his week here.

The students found the week a lot of fun and were very observant of the differences of rural life versus urban life. OMHC was glad to host them and special appreciation goes to those in Odessa who were willing to host them in their homes during the week.