A few thoughts from the Editor of Service-in-School.
The sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot profiled a pediatrician dedicated to providing care to underserved families in Boston in her eloquent treatise on the quality of respect, aptly titled Respect. She wrote, “Her respect is embedded in action, not in after-the-fact interpretation or analysis” (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2000, p. 58). She continues by describing how the health professional provides healing care not through deftness of scientific skill alone but also by respecting the worth and dignity of each patient and advocating for those who's voices may otherwise remain unheard.
Health professional students across the globe are practicing this care-in-action. These students are both inspiring and being inspired by innovations in school curricula which are increasingly attentive to community needs, both near and far. Nursing and nurse-practitioner students in Georgia provide health screenings and primary care in migrant camps, working late into the night, adapting care delivery to farm worker schedules. Medical and physician-assistant students provide health education to homeless communities in New Jersey. Students across health professional disciplines are collaborating to enhance health care, creating a template now for working together that will last after they have graduated.
Like the pediatrician in Lawrence-Lightfoot's book, these students aren't engaged in solely intellectual acts to be described and analyzed. However, too often we fail to share these stories of service. Context Journal's Service-in-Schools section strives to document these efforts, creating a road map of best practices to be emulated and expanded upon by others. Furthermore, we at Context Journal recognize that the story itself can be transformative, that in the process of telling we make meaning. This act of reflecting on our work, and sharing it with others, not only helps us provide quality care to those in need but helps us grow in our own humanness. It is this element, the human act of caring, that patients and families will remember.
So please share with us your stories. Service-in-Schools seeks manuscripts that reflect student-driven changes in curricula that have improved the way you provide care, academic programs or special curriculums that have inspired you to affect positive change, or proposals for integrating service and advocacy into formal health professions curricula.
Editor, Service-in-Schools
