First Step Home

Alyssa Lucas, Summer 2017

During my summer at First Step Home, I wore a couple of different hats; my main one was working in the medication room, where I observed the clients taking their medications, helped them to obtain refills on their prescriptions, and maintained the day-to-day organization that goes in to keeping the medication room running. My other hat (and my favorite hat!) was to lead two group sessions per week in the Maternal and Behavioral tracks of the program. I taught an 8-week class titled The Whole Self where each week we discussed a different aspect of the self and wellness (i.e., spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, occupational, intellectual, social, and environmental) and then the women would record an important point from the discussion in the corresponding wedge of the 8-piece pie chart we created in the first week. During the last week, we had a recap session of all the classes and they gave me a lot of feedback; I also handed out “satisfaction surveys” and asked for more feedback on how to improve the class in the future. Thus, my summer was incredibly busy, rewarding, frustrating at times, but overwhelmingly a positive experience that has helped me gain a lot of understanding and compassion for experiences that I never understood before. Working intimately with women who have been affected greatly by the serious disease that is addiction opened my eyes to a lot of unique challenges have had to struggle through. In addition, having very open conversations with these women helped me to see the healthcare system from their perspective and think about how I can become the type of physician that treats all of my patients with respect and comes from a place of non-judgment, as a lot of the clients had felt cast aside by the healthcare system in one capacity or another. Being able to get the women to speak openly with me about their personal trials and missteps was humbling, and I will truly miss the women at FSH and the relationships and bonds that I formed there. During my internship, I rode the emotional roller coaster that is dealing with individuals who struggle with addiction, from being incredibly proud and honored to feeling helpless and frustrated with the system. I spent 40 hours a week getting to know these women and listening to their stories, and I learned much more from them than they ever could have learned from me.