Every week, 30 University of Tennessee, Knoxville, students volunteer for two-hour shifts at the Remote Area Medical (RAM) headquarters housed in an abandoned schoolhouse in south Knoxville. These students help RAM workers organize hundreds of boxes of donated medical supplies in preparation to run clinics.
RAM’s biggest clinic –- and what the UT volunteers considered their most significant undertaking with RAM yet –- took place in the Jacobs Building in Chilhowee Park Feb. 5-6. But that wasn’t UT students’ first clinical experience with RAM.
In August, 15 freshman accompanied by several upperclassmen, student staff members and Provost Susan Martin traveled to St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, just outside New Orleans, to assist RAM. In September, another 13 first-year students traveled to assist with a RAM clinic in Cleveland, Tenn.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIzPN30_wps
RAM coordinators hope to have UT students participating in as many RAM clinics as possible, both in Tennessee and across the U.S.