Collectively, students served more than 3,300 patients during 18 days of clinics
Belmont University’s College of Pharmacy sent students abroad this summer on medical-related missions trips to both Honduras and Cambodia led by faculty members Dr. Tracy Frame and Adam Pace and College of Pharmacy Dean Dr. David Gregory. Though each trip visited a different place, they sought out a similar goal — to impact the lives of the patients they served.
Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Tracy Frame’s interprofessional team, made up of both undergraduate and graduate nursing students, pharmacy students, a social worker and five faculty members, spent 10 days in Cambodia facilitating an all-student run clinic that saw more than 700 patients. Developed by the students before leaving the States, the clinic’s protocol allowed each patient the opportunity to be seen by undergraduate nursing students to have vitals evaluated, treated by a graduate nursing student and then counseled and prescribed medication by a pharmacy intern.
Frame’s dedication to student service experiences is a foundational part of her teaching philosophy. “This generation of students loves experiences and getting involved,” she said. “They want to take initiative, have a voice and be transformed. Additionally, students learn more by getting involved in hands-on service experiences than by sitting in my classroom. Watching them serve and love others is when I see them happiest and the most content in their own lives.”
Traveling to Gracias, Honduras with the “Mission of Harmony,” Gregory’s team included two pharmacy students and one undergraduate Spanish major who spent time serving throughout the group’s clinic. The pharmacy students worked with each patient after they had seen the health care provider, selecting the proper medication for the patient’s disease along with the appropriate medication management parameters. But their work didn’t stop there.
Though a considerable amount of the group’s efforts was medical in nature, Gregory said the service they completed in Honduras goes so much deeper than what can be seen in a health record. “A patient’s life is so much more than their medication,” he said. “Pharmacy can be a tool in helping each person live a better life, but it’s not the most important aspect. Pharmacy is what God has allowed me to do with my life, but these trips are about so much more than that. It’s about fulfilling human needs, not just medical ones. And that’s a transcendent cause.”
Pharmacy Manager and Associate Professor Dr. Adam Pace took his group to Copan, Honduas where they implemented a clinic that facilitated health care to local residents and provided “family packs” complete with hygiene items, vitamins and parasite medications. While there, the group was able to share their faith with the patients they served.
Pace said he sees service learning as the ultimate expression of his faith. “As Christian faculty, it is our duty to model Christian love before our students,” he said. “I can think of no better way to do that than to take them with me as I serve and try to show the love of Christ to the world.”
Beyond a physical expression of his faith, Pace said he sees the experience as a way to ensure his students have the opportunity to experience the blessings of their lives in a tangible way. “I hope they gain a fuller sense of the privilege we all enjoy and the obligations we have in this privileged environment. I hope they also have a heightened sense of the importance of what our profession offers by seeing what happens in its absence.”
Trip participant and Pharmacy student Camry Kerley said the opportunity to travel alongside her team to Honduras was an excellent experience that only strengthened her passion for missions through medical care. “Everything was so different from home,” she said. “The language, the lifestyle, the surroundings and peoples’ attitudes–Honduras is unlike any place I’ve ever been, and this experience was definitely one of a lifetime. After the completion of this trip, I feel more confidence in my pharmacy knowledge and reassured of my passion for missions.”
All missions trips facilitated by the College of Pharmacy are open to non-health care majors who are interested in participating and are financially supported by the College’s Golf Fundraiser.
Radke returned to Nashville last week for a stop at Parnassus Books as part of an ongoing national tour to promote her debut book, “Eat Cake Be Brave,” which was published by Grand Central/ Hachette earlier this summer. “Last year I traveled all over the United States as a public speaker for civic group, corporations, benefits, galas, schools, etc. This year has been spent getting the word on my book out by traveling and doing appearances from ‘Megyn Kelly’s Today’ show to Hallmark’s ‘Home and Family.'”
With her own career now in high gear, Radke also took a moment to offer advice to current Belmont students, whatever path they may be choosing. “First, I would want them to know that in the course of their life they will face some rejection. Maybe they already have. Maybe they are facing some of it right now. We all face rejection, it’s part of our journey. What we cannot allow to happen is that we cannot allow it to define us. Our rejection is not the end of us, body shaming is not the demise of us, dream killers will not have the last word for us. There must be something inside of us that is stronger than the words thrown at us. But that is up to you – and no one else. No one else can do that hard work for us, we have to do it ourselves. So however you want to do it, through your faith, through counseling, through journaling, whatever path you choose just make sure you are reminding yourself daily WHO you are, WHOSE you are and what the truth about you really is. Secondly, there is a section in my book that says ‘We will lose all the girls if we teach them that never stopping equals strength,’ and what I mean by that is this, we are in a relentless culture. Keep trying, keep going, never stop, get better, work harder, get up and try again, dust yourself off and keep at it. Doing that, day in and day out? It’s unhealthy. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is to quit forcing a dream or a destiny that might not be for us. I just KNEW my voice would make me famous – and it is – but not at all in the way I originally thought. The minute I stopped throwing myself against a brick wall was the minute God grabbed me and said, ‘I need you elsewhere. I’ve been needing you for a long time but you were just absolutely sure you knew what was best for you. You didn’t. You had no idea.’ He was right. He was so very right.”
According to Smith Whitehouse, “In my third-year writing class… Leah researched and wrote a tremendous business plan for a bakery she had long dreamed of opening. I have used her work as an exemplar of fine writing and research in the years since she was my student. I remember she generously brought scrumptious baked treats to our class one day. Leah even baked my wedding cake!”
Led by Dr. David Schreiber (Entertainment Industry Studies) and Dr. Marnie Vanden Noven (Sport Science), the trip’s course information was applied while students were snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, participating in a Sydney bike tour, and zip lining and canyoning in the world’s oldest rainforest, the Daintree. Students also enjoyed learning from industry experts while indulging in many of these experiential learning opportunities allowing them to appreciate the marketing and management of tourism activities and the potential problems involved in organizing such services.
Students also collaborated on an international, interdisciplinary entertainment industry project with students from Australia and China. Working with industry professionals from Mushroom Music Group (Australia’s largest independent music company) and Live Nation (the world’s largest concert promoter), students worked in international teams to investigate, plan and present a project related to the primary and secondary ticketing markets within the live entertainment industry.
