Personal Narrative: My Goal As A Free Clinic

Our goal as a free clinic is to help everyone and anyone who needs it. We typically see people who are homeless, cannot afford health care, or people who have immigrated from other countries in search of a new beginning. I typically worked the night shift which starts at seven o’clock at night and goes until about one or two in the morning depending on how many patients we have. One night we were especially busy, and as the head receptionist and head volunteer, it was my job to keep track of who walked into the lobby first and who hadn’t signed in. There were very few seats left and one man walked in around eleven, complaining of a chronic headache, and asked to see our doctor. I explained to him that the wait was very long as that night we
My initial instinct was he may have been trying to get medication for someone else, but I could not get rid of this feeling that he would abuse the pain pills. I decided that I at least needed to talk to the head doctor and confirm or deny that my thoughts were the slightest bit valid. I pulled her in the back-conference room and explained that he had originally come in with a chronic headache and wanted pain medication to make it go away. I expressed my concerns to her in a rational and professional way and she agreed with me. She asked the gentleman to come back into the room as she forgot to ask a few routine questions. She screened him for addiction and found that he had struggled with it his whole life. He originally came to the free clinic that night to ask if we knew of any rehabilitation facilities that were cheap as he had just lost his job to his addiction, but he influenced himself that what he was doing was okay before he even walked into our clinic. Had I not said anything to the doctor that night, he would have continued his addiction and he would have lost himself in it. By a simple act of compassion, I helped change a