Help Provide Free Care
Your gift helps RAM provide free dental, vision, and medical services to people in need.
Remote Area Medical (RAM®) brings free healthcare clinics to tens of thousands of patients each year. This is thanks to those who volunteer at free healthcare clinics with RAM. They dedicate their time and expertise to serving communities in need.
It takes a lot to bring together a RAM Clinic. General support volunteers, CORE Volunteers, RAM Staff, members of the Community Host Group, all come together to set up and run the clinic. Then, during the clinic, our volunteer healthcare professionals provide free, quality dental, vision, and medical care to our patients.
What are professional schools?
Many of these healthcare providers come to RAM through our relationships with professional schools across the country. These schools see the importance of RAM’s mission and encourage their students to volunteer at our free clinics.
Professional schools offer specialized training and schooling that focus on preparing students for specific careers. Typically, when RAM talks about ‘professional schools’, we are referring to medical schools, dental schools, optometry schools, pharmacy schools, etc. Professional schools are preparing students for work in the medical field.
More than 235 professional schools have worked with RAM. They help us to bring free, quality dental, vision, and medical care to those in need. Students have the opportunity to help people in need, and get real world experience in their field of practice.
Professional school students
Students enrolled in a professional school are allowed — and encouraged — to volunteer at RAM Clinics. Only third- and fourth-year students can work with patients at our clinics. All students are required to be under the supervision of licensed faculty members.
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Students who are not yet in their third or fourth year are still encouraged to volunteer as general support volunteers. This way they can connect with patients and make a difference, even though they can’t practice their specialty yet.
To say that our professional school volunteers put in a lot of hours at RAM Clinics would be an understatement! Altogether our professional school faculty and students have volunteered for more than 217,150 hours at our clinics. That is more than 9,048 days — or nearly 25 years — worth of volunteer hours between all our professional schools.
Faculty and staff at professional schools
Faculty and staff from these professional schools have spent thousands of hours serving RAM’s patients. Not only that, but closely supervising the students they bring to clinics. By bringing students to our clinics, they have directly impacted the number of patients we’ve served over the years. The number of patients we can see is directly related to the number of volunteers we have at each clinic.
Thousands of volunteers from professional schools have dedicated their time and skills to help us serve our patients. Volunteering with RAM gives students real world experience in their field and allows them to give back to their communities. It also gives them the opportunity to make an impact on the lives of each of our patients.
We are incredibly grateful for the hard work and dedication from our professional schools’ faculty and students. These schools choose to volunteer at free healthcare clinics with us and make a difference in communities across the country. RAM could not do what we do without the unwavering support of these professional schools and their volunteers.
Ways to support RAM’s mission
Faculty or students interested in having their professional school volunteer at RAM’s free healthcare clinics, please email [email protected] or call (865) 579-1530.
Watch this short video to hear what Dr. Leonard Contardo and his students from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Services (MCPHS) Optometry had to say about volunteering with RAM. Dr. Contardo supervised MCPHS Optometry students at the RAM Clinic in Cookeville, TN.
Anyone else who wants to volunteer at free healthcare clinics with us, please visit www.ramusa.org/volunteer to learn more.
If you can’t volunteer, that’s okay! There are still ways for you to support RAM and our mission to bring free healthcare to anyone in need. Making a donation or even becoming a monthly donor are a great way to show your support for RAM. As a nonprofit organization, RAM relies on donations. Help us continue to bridge the gap in healthcare coverage for our patients.
Don’t forget to follow RAM on social media for behind-the-scenes content and to see what we’ve been up to.
If you would like to read our other blog posts, visit www.ramusa.org/blog. Read our weekly posts, each post takes approximately 4 minutes to read. Check back here later to learn more about many of the professional schools who have helped RAM over the years.
Please check our schedule to see where we are going this year. Visit one of our free healthcare clinics offered across the country.
