The end of the road
As the semester draws to an end in a short two days, it’s hard not to reflect over the past semester and see all that has been accomplished. On August 12th, we came together as a group to begin our first class in Public Health. The majority of us honestly didn’t know exactly what we were getting ourselves into, but we were ready to embark on the journey together. Within about a week’s time, we had gone from a group of 26 individuals to one big family. We all learned to work as a team and our classmates quickly turned into our closest friends. As the weeks continued, we were assigned our practicum groups which then again, brought us each even closer.
Our group of six people, Andrea, Imari, Alyssa, Alex, Gabby, and myself, were assigned to Project Lazarus. A couple of us knew what Project Lazarus was beforehand but some of us had no idea, so for those who didn’t, we quickly gave them a synopsis of the project and then did further research to find specific details. (www.projectlazarus.org) At the beginning of the semester in practicum, we were given a rubric to go by which detailed the specifics of how the semester would run. For the most part, we tried to follow the schedule, but there were some changes made along the way. The first section of the rubric discussed the role of the course director, preceptor, and student. For these, we followed pretty strictly. The course director in our case was Dr. Tillman, the preceptors were Mr. Rouse and Ms. Hawkins, and the students were the six of us. The role of the course director was to “assign students to project-specific teams, work with the preceptors to set and adjust goals for the project, communicate to the students the objectives, activities and products of the field experience, contextualize field experiences with academic content and facilitated group discussions, provide a layer of accountability and supervision for the students’ contributions to the project, evaluate student performance with regard to project participation, products, reflection blogs, and final presentation.” The role of the preceptor was to “assist the course director in setting the objectives, activities and products of the field experience, introduce the students to their organization and to working in rural NC, explain the organization and function of the agency, identify the complexities of the community work in which they are becoming involved, provide a layer of accountability and supervision for the students’ contribution to the project, and evaluate student performance on forms provided.” The role of the student was to “conduct himself/herself in a manner that upholds the rules, regulations, and expectations of the community-based field site and the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, be thoroughly prepared for each task to be conducted during the placement period, consult with team members, preceptors and course director when unsure of appropriate actions needed to complete assignments, be able to provide clear explanation of the objectives, activities, and products of the field experience, complete a minimum of 60 clock hours in service to the project and keep a clear log of time and activities, complete all assignments and deliver all products by the written deadline, evaluate the project, precepting organization, and team members on the forms provided by the course director.” The only part of these objectives I felt may have been lacking was “introduce the students to your organization and to working in rural NC.” With the other practicum groups, the preceptor they worked with was the immediate correspondent for the agency they were working with. With our group though, we were working alongside the Harnett Health Department to help with a side initiative known as Project Lazarus. So instead of working directly with Project Lazarus personnel, we were working with a “middle man” which became very difficult at times. At times, it felt like our team’s mission wasn't the top priority, which would be understandable since the Health Department has many other issues to attend to, but it still made it difficult for our team when we were so excited about this being our main project this semester. As a whole, our main objectives were to “explore the significant issue of prescription drug abuse in rural communities, to identify the roles of a variety of community organizations in the development of solutions to complex health problems, to use mass communications and social media for health promotion, and to employ research and writing skills to seek grants for implementation.” For our objectives, we completed all that were expected except the grant seeking. The timeframe for the grant application to be in our hands changed over the course of the semester and since it was held back, we were not able to be a part of the grant seeking portion of the project during our semester. Our deliverables for the semester included writing “ a series of public service announcements about prescription drug abuse, prepare an educational bulletin insert on the topic of prescription drug abuse for use within faith communities and identify churches for implementation, prepare social media messaging targeting teens with information about prescription drug abuse, and draft a web page for the Harnett County Health Department website with resources and information on prescription drug abuse.” All of these deliverables were completed as directed and approved by our preceptors. Our public service announcement however, was mainly one large PSA that could be used in different settings instead of three separate ones. Our educational bulletin was distributed to three different churches in Harnett County, all of which were appreciative for our efforts and looked forward to sharing the information with their parishioners. For our social media message, our main target was Tumblr (www.projectlazarusharnettcounty.tumblr.com). Here we shared pertinent information for teens about prescription drug abuse, statistics, what to look for, and how to receive help. Our web page on the HCHD website was also comprised of many of these articles and links to information about prescription drug abuse in teens. Other than these objectives listed, other main events we were involved in this semester were the September 9th meeting with local stakeholders in Harnett County along with the Project Lazarus personnel and the drug disposal directory where we found out which locations were available in the surrounding areas for prescription medication drop-offs. After our semester was complete, we met with Mr. Rouse and Ms. Hawkins one last time on November 24th for a final debriefing meeting. Here we discussed all that had occurred this semester throughout the practicum, what could have been changed, and what we feel would be the best improvements for the next groups to come. Though this is the end of the road for our practicum group, it most certainly isn't the end for Project Lazarus and we look forward to seeing it unravel even more in the coming future!
