Life West is preparing for its latest service trip to Tonga, which is coming up later this month. Ahead of the venture to the South Pacific, several students shared some of their most memorable experiences on service trips at a recent Friday seminar and in online videos.
In recalling their experiences, several students remember how they dealt with seeing large crowds of people who were without consistent access to chiropractic care.
“It was a very fast-paced trip,” Alex Lee said. “The line was out the door. You had to keep moving, but even though it was a lot faster than here in the clinic, everything kind of slowed down. I think everyone kind of hit a rhythm after two or three hours.”
“It’s kind of amazing,” Hayden Klein said. “You just get to be lost in service. It was quite the experience.”
In addition to the hands-on experience on these trips, students learn valuable lessons about their own capabilities.
“I think the biggest lesson I learned was to trust myself and what I’m doing,” said Allison Land about her recent trip to India. “We spend so much time learning from classroom lectures and textbooks. Once we’re actually able to apply this clinically with real people, it’s pretty life-changing.”
Service trips provide opportunities for students to deal with different cases and different groups of people. Many said that patients without consistent access to chiropractic care approached their appointments quite differently than those with assumptions about how the process worked.
“They didn’t come in with any preconceived notions,” Danielle Jordan said. “They were there to heal. We made the adjustment, wished them the best, and saw how far they came. It was incredible.”
Read more about service trips on the Life West website. If you’re a student and want to participate in a future service trip, contact Sharon Seto in the Life West President’s Office.
