School Project Becomes Professional Presentation

By Ruben Ruiz

Linked Learning is one of the greatest things to happen in my life. At STEM Academy, a Linked Learning school, they ask students to not only accomplish what we know we are capable of, but also to challenge ourselves with bigger and better goals and expectations.

In my biomedicine class, we were instructed to develop a new innovation that would benefit and improve emergency room efficiency. My group established a new way of redirecting patients to a free clinic that was directly connected to the emergency rooms and hospitals.

Usually, emergency rooms are severely overcrowded, which means patients have to wait a long time to get treated. In some cases, attached free clinics are a resource that emergency rooms can use to offset the effects of having too many patients to treat at one time, but the building lacked a communication system that could effectively coordinate the transition of patients. Preventing patients from getting the care they need can only exacerbate their potentially serious medical conditions, so my class group decided to come up with several recommendations that would increase efficiency and decrease patient wait times, including:

Install clear maps of the hospital and free clinic so patients know where they are and where they need to go

Create a file and computer system to easily share information between the emergency room and free clinic
Initiate a check system where hospital and clinic staff communicate constantly to ensure that patients both reached the clinic and received the care they needed
When it came time to present our group project, I discovered that individuals in my community had learned about the exciting things students had been doing in my school, which attracted doctors and experts in the healthcare field to attend the presentations. Knowing that healthcare professionals would be there made my heart drop and the sense of doubt slowly creep in – along with the nervousness of failing.

While presenting, I saw my peers and the important guests in attendance smiling and engaging in my group’s project. Noticing how enthusiastic the audience was about our project took the burden off of making a fool of myself. I learned that when you are willing to succeed , you are bound to achieve your goals.