Eastern AHEC Rural Health Immersion - Student Reflections: Lily Russell
Healthy Acadia has served as Maine’s Eastern Area Health Education Center (AHEC) since 2023. Our service area includes Washington, Hancock, Waldo, and Knox counties.
Maine AHECs provide community-based clinical training experiences to health professions students; encourage Maine youth to pursue careers in the health professions; offer training and continuing education programs to practicing health professionals; and develop public health approaches to address current and emerging community needs.
As part of this program, Healthy Acadia and community partners work together to create rural health immersion opportunities for health professions students to learn more about rural and underserved communities, including Rural Health Immersions (RHI) for Care for the Underserved Pathways (CUP) AHEC Scholars. and community-based experiential learning opportunities for non-CUP scholars.
We will periodically publish guest blog posts from AHEC Scholars who chose to share their experience with the program.
Guest post contributed by Lily Russell, UNE PA Student. Lily participated in our March 2023 RHI and reflects on the experience.
On Monday afternoon, my group was able to take a tour of the Sunbeam boat and learn about the services they offer. The staff from the Maine Seacoast Mission sat and ate lunch with us on the boat while telling us about what they do. I learned that they keep the boat open to anyone and everyone in the area, and always provide snacks and a warm place to stay if needed. Douglas, a therapist who works on the boat noted that he closely observes community members as they are having conversations with one another, to see if and how he can assist these people in their day-to-day lives. He hands out flyers to inform people of the services they offer and invites everyone back.
After leaving the Sunbeam, three of us went to Open Table and prepared meals for the following day. The meal was a Dal with yogurt and cranberry chutney on the side. My peers and I prepared the to-go meals by putting the yogurt into several small containers. This was a great experience because we were able to learn a lot about what Open Table does, and what their goals are. They are a service that provides free meals to the community with to-go options as well. They frequently have live music and make the entire experience very enjoyable. They accept donations to keep the service thriving, and they provide healthy vegetarian dishes to the community. To be able to help prepare the meal, and then go back the next day and eat the meal and enjoy the experience was great. Open Table brings in everyone from the community, of all ages, and provides them with hot meals on a regular basis.
Following the Open Table experience, my group and I visited the Bar Harbor Fire Department and did naloxone administration training. John Lennon did a great job with the presentation and educating us on how and when to correctly use Narcan. We then got to hear stories from the police and fire department, and how they handle cases daily. This experience was very necessary as drug abuse is becoming more common in all communities. It is important to know how to potentially save a life in these situations.
Finally, to end our night, we went to Blaze for dinner. This restaurant exceeded my expectations with their great service and food they provided. This was a nice time to debrief with my group and talk about everything we learned throughout the day. Overall, I really enjoyed my time and learned a lot in such a short period of time. I am very fortunate for all the people who took time out of their day to educate us and answer all the questions we had. Experiencing a rural community gave me a lot of information regarding how the community comes together as one to help one another, as well as the different resources they offer that may not be offered in a bigger city such as Portland. Whether I plan to work in a rural area or not, I believe it is very important to have this experience to gain a better aspect of healthcare in all different communities. This trip was so beneficial, and I would gladly do it again and recommend it to others.