Fifteen years ago, Reverend William Chignoli teamed up with the Methodist Church to provide a professional health care setting for immigrants and refugees known as La Clinica. Today, La Clinica has significantly expanded thanks to the efforts of St. Louis community doctors, nurses and student volunteers.
Spanish lecturer Victoria Braxs coordinates the La Clinica volunteer program at Washington University.
“Through the program on campus, we recruit pre-med students and highly proficient bilingual and native Spanish speakers,” said Braxs.
Braxs also trains the student volunteers. The training program for volunteers is essential, noted Braxs.
“I train the volunteers because you really need to develop culture proficiency,” said Braxs. “Different cultures have different ways to perceive illnesses, treatments and the relationships between doctors and patients. You must consider the cultural beliefs that can interfere with medicine.”
Although La Clinica is a very organized clinic, it is different from an American hospital in several aspects.
“You enter La Clinica and it is a different country,” said Braxs. “It is Latin America. It’s not like being in an American hospital. It is a much more relaxed and friendly environment.”
Junior Nikhil Angelo volunteers at La Clinica. He works as a translator between patients and doctors, and assists nurses with taking vital signs. He emphasized the importance of understanding the cultural differences in order to provide successful healthcare services.
“We’ll see a wide range of patients,” said Angelo. “Mostly these people are coming in for primary care stuff including checkups, physicals, diabetes management, immunizations for their children, etc.”
“The environment and the health care professional-patient interaction is quite different from a traditional hospital,” said Angelo. “It’s not really the actual cases themselves that are interesting, it’s more the dynamic and how different it is from a traditional hospital, such as Barnes-Jewish.”
In fact, Angelo had to gain more familiarity with the culture before he began work at La Clinica.
“I heard about La Clinica when I entered as a freshman,” said Angelo. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have the proficiency to start volunteering there. Last spring, I knew I was going to be in St. Louis for the summer, so I just went there and said I was interested in volunteering.”
Junior Ray Mailhot has also had a wide range of responsibilities working as a volunteer at La Clinica.
“I’ve worked faxing and copying before and stocking and organizing the pharmacy,” said Mailhot. “La Clinica usually needs volunteers to translate for the doctors who also volunteer there. They can serve as basic translators or do patient intake, but other jobs and assignments are given as needed.”
As president of the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS), Mailhot has tried to publicize La Clinica on campus.
“I really wanted our group to be a resource for La Clinica and Accion Social Comunitaria, which is also based in the church on Fairview,” said Mailhot. “I had Kathleen Foster, a registered nurse in charge of getting volunteers, come speak at our meeting so our members could hear about possibilities of helping the community through La Clinica.”
Braxs, Angelo and Mailhot praised the organization and the talented staff.
“It’s a great organization,” said Angelo. “They’re doing great work there.”
La Clinica is located at 3646 Fairview Ave. in St. Louis. For more information, visit www.laclinica-stl.org.