An honors class at The University of Alabama provides pre-med students with hands-on experience in clinical settings and helps them develop as future physicians.

The UH Medicine and Community Program allows students to work at a hypertension clinic in Marion, Ala., hosts guest speakers on a wide range of topics in medicine, and allows students to develop their own health-related project. The program is classified as an independent study through the Honors College.

“The program takes pre-med students in the Honors College and provides those students with direction in developing a set of medical skills,” Paul Strickland, a senior majoring in political science and one of the student directors of the program, said. “More importantly, it provides them with understanding about the issues in medicine, especially the role of the physician in the community.”

Hannah Zahedi, a sophomore majoring in biology and art history, said she feels the program helped her have a more comprehensive pre-med education.

“Going down to the clinic has given a human component to what I’m learning in class,” she said. “In a lot of the pre-med stuff we do in school, you just say ‘the patient, the patient…’ You kind of lose the more personal component.”

In addition to reaching out to a typically older population of patients with hypertension, students in the course teach about nutrition and other health issues at Albert Turner Senior Elementary School in Marion.

Annie Lenox, a junior majoring in biology and another student director of the course, said this is related to the focus of the program’s community outreach.

“We focus a lot on primary care,” she said. “We’re focusing on prevention as a way to make people healthier.”

Lenox has contributed to these prevention efforts through her participation in the course.

“I was in the hypertension clinic, and this man came in who had never been to the clinic, had never been diagnosed with high blood pressure, but he was worried,” Lenox said.

After taking the man’s blood pressure several times to ensure the high reading she was getting was not due to her own error, Lenox said she became concerned the high reading was not due to her inexperience – it was because the man had a potentially serious health problem.

“We sent him to the doctor that’s across the street and told him, ‘You have to get this checked out,’” she said.

Zahedi said her interactions with patients have also been very rewarding, particularly one with a cheerful older woman.

“When she left, she gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and said she would come back next week to see me,” Zahedi said. “You’re going to go down there and have a good day. It’s always made me really happy to meet people that I wouldn’t usually have the opportunity to interact with.”

Applications for the program are due March 3 at midnight. For more information, students can email [email protected].

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