HeRMES
	Volunteering

Medical Students:

Interested in volunteering? Here are our current criteria:

• Must be a medical student in good academic standing; Medical Scholars Program students doing graduate work are also eligible.

• You must have fulfilled current UICOM requirements to be involved in clinical activities (i.e. TB test, etc) and be willing to allow Student Affairs to verify your eligibility to us.

• You must have at least completed the History and Physical Diagnosis course to participate as a "junior student" (i.e. vitals, chief complaint, medication list)

• You must have completed either the Family Medicine or Medicine I clerkship in order to participate as a "senior student" (i.e. full evaluation of the patient under physician supervision.) Case-by-case exceptions may be considered for special situations.

• You must be able to travel to our partner clinics, which are both currently in Champaign-Urbana. In general, carpooling is encouraged. Depending on the site, a light meal may be provided, but is not necessarily guaranteed.

Undergraduate Students:

Contact the Illini Health Coalition.

Others:

We currently don't have defined roles for others in HeRMES. However, that doesn't mean we won't consider you. If you have a clear proposal, contact us and let us know!

At this time, we have no formally defined criteria for the number of sessions we expect students to participate in. Clearly academic obligations take priority at all times, but to the extent possible please make yourself available for clinic days as scheduling occurs. Much of the value of HeRMES comes from the ability of students to see and follow-up with the same patients from session to session, and without repeated contact, this is lost. Additionally, if you're unable to come, it becomes difficult to staff the clinic and provide maximum benefit to the patients.

This really is a wonderful opportunity, and we think you'll find the clinic staff pleasant to work with and the patients to be very appreciative of your time and efforts. This is a very different environment from most curricular health care enviroments, and provides a taste of "something different" that we hope you will carry with you into your future careers. Nearly 1 in 5 people in the US are uninsured, and the vast majority will never even come through your doors because of their lack of ability to pay. Think about this when you're out "in the real world"...we hope HeRMES may help give you ideas about how you can help in the future, irrespective of your future career choices.