Arizona State University’s Downtown Phoenix is home to aspiring medical students. Although there are various clubs and organizations that cater to specific fields in medicine, Medical Directive is a student-driven team centered on creating a new caliber of ASU Pre-Health students that launched in 2020.
The club’s approach to maintaining its mission statement is to have a two-factor system in bolstering graduate school applications: Practical clinical opportunities with hands-on experiences, coupled with talks and key ideas expressed by a multitude of healthcare professionals. As the club is experiencing rapid expansion, the team is seeking active members to those who are interested.
Third-year Co-Founder and President of Medical Directive Eashan Das is not only a board member at Arizona State, but is also the head executive member at UA, NAU, and GCU.
Das and other previous graduates were all two-week summer scrub counselors helping high school students learn and experience medicine including pathways and specialties at the UA College Of Medicine.
During the program, Das realized he wanted to foster the track of providing actual relevant clinical information as well as opportunities to all the pre-health students that are oftentimes limited in other pre-existing organizations.
“Based on those types of concepts, I created Medical Directive where we focus in on helping everybody with the necessary resources and it’s getting more exposure: It’s like a snowball effect,” Das said. “We grew so fast because we had so many opportunities and I thought it was important to bring it forward so that people can have those connections and meet people to conduct their own research and internships.”
Das stressed how they could provide students with a bolstered, competitive medical school application compared to a typical pre-med student.
Fourth-year PR Coordinator throughout Arizona State’s branches of Medical Directive Nick Oleinik joined the club for the purpose of enhancing his medical school application and also finding a place where he can have hands-on experience.
“There are so many opportunities to get involved in-person and make a real change in our communities,” Oleinik said. “Medical Directive is really a whole new caliber of pre-med health professionals – it’s crazy that there wasn’t anything like this before.”
Das highlighted one of the first meetings that were held with a cardiologist, as a sophomore student.
“It was in the middle of the rain, barely anyone showed up, it was honestly four people tops,” Das said.
Although it began with a small group of students, it has expanded as more members have joined. Last week, they held their Street Run events that had upwards to 25 members collectively providing medical services and giveaway items to homeless people living in the downtown area.
“It’s really cool, to see how far we’ve come,” Das said.
The club has partnered up with an organization called Street Runs in Phoenix; where they come together with students from U of A College of Medicine at Phoenix twice a month. Undergraduates from Medical Directive would serve as representatives to serve homeless individuals as patient navigators to make sure they’re healthy and their vitals are well. Their ultimate goal was to minimize ED visits to hospitals.
Due to the pandemic, some modifications had to be done in order to follow CDC guidelines in place. For example, students were not able to take vitals of homeless people for Street Runs and only a couple of people could – including Das.
“It was myself and the co-founder for Street Med taking blood pressures and blood sugars,” Das said. “The other student is covered in liability for our club so they were able to engage in conversations so the homeless individuals could keep their morales up.”
As Das is a leader for Street Medicine-Phoenix, he vamped up the opportunities Medical Directive undergraduates can complete.
“Undergrads can connect more with students, faculty, clinical preceptors, and even other professionals like PA, PT, OT, to name a few,” Das said. “That coalition really is being expanded upon as we grow.”
In terms of the future, some upcoming events include BLS and CPR training, Physician Discussions, Medical Student Panels, Clinical Internships; along with opportunities like hospital tours, Transplant Cardiologist Q & A session, Orthopedic Surgery Stimulations, and certainly, Street Runs.
Contact the reporter at yhan99@asu.edu.
Yoori Han was the politics editor at Downtown Devil during fall 2021 and part of spring 2022.
