#theVIPexperience Post #170: Israa Malik

 Working at Crossroads has allowed me to develop communication skills and better understand the health barriers faced in the community. Before working at Crossroads, I used to work as a volunteer for Bethesda North Hospital and as a medical assistant at an urgent care. Being a volunteer I used to take calls from nurses, track paperwork, and assist the families of patients. This gave me experience when communicating over the phone and organizational skills when it came to updating the families on the patient. Working at the urgent care allowed me to utilize hands-on skills such as performing covid tests and taking vitals of patients. It was a very fast-paced environment that required me to often learn on the spot. 

When coming to Crossroads I appreciated how everything went at your own pace and comfort. In my previous work setting, there was an understaffing issue so I wasn’t properly trained and had to sometimes learn things on my own. It became very stressful when working with patients because I wasn’t fully confident in what I was doing at times. At Crossroads, I appreciated the time the other CVIP’s took to train me on how to make my first referral. The numerous resources like the training guides allowed me to learn how to make referrals in a stress-free environment and increased my confidence when talking over the phone. 

I continued on following the scripts on the training guides until one day I was on the phone with a patient where following the script didn’t apply. I was calling to remind her about an appointment for the next day and as I had asked the typical questions for patient identification I had also asked if it was a good time to call. I didn’t get the common response of “yes” but instead the patient had started sobbing. I was surprised and was scrambling through the training guides to see if there was a way to handle this but after about 30 seconds I proceeded to ask her if she was okay. Shen talked about how stressful her morning was so I offered to listen and had a normal conversation with her. We talked for about 5 minutes and at the end of the conversation, she thanked me for just listening and had asked me to just send her a text regarding her appointment. That experience made me realize how there is sometimes no direct pathway to go about something and how taking even the smallest amount of time to just listen to the patients can immensely improve the care they receive.