Our Final Days at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health

As we end our Capstone experience at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, I can't help but be relieved and saddened at the same time. I feel relieved that this chapter of my senior year is over and I am that much closer to graduating but also saddened that the experience is over just as we were getting a hang of our group project and making results. In our last weeks of our efforts in outreach to Lakewood and Parma, we started to change our strategies. For example, we increased our table time at Tri-C, West Campus, from once a week to four times a week. In our evaluation process, we realized that we were seeing many of the same students and felt we could outreach to many new students if we increased our days at Tri-C. In Lakewood, we found that we faced many barriers such as timing when businesses were open and not in the middle of a lunch/dinner rush, or having to return when the manager was present. Thus, we had to plan our routes more efficiently as well as change our timing when we were going to visit each business.

Just as our process evolved, our experience was coming to an end. Nevertheless, we can absolutely say that this was a rewarding experience. We really had to work hard to make things work within the agency, the community of Lakewood and Parma, and especially, each other. As I take a step back and look at our accomplishments, I can say that we really made a difference. We were able to reach our goal of increasing utilization of the Family Planning Clinic as well as the creation of the CCBH Family Planning Clinic website which was non-existent before our arrival.

This experience has given me a greater understanding of the roles public health plays in the health of our community, our patients, and our families. I can say that I will take these experiences to strengthen and apply them to my nursing practice, nursing theory, and personal life as I grow into my nursing profession.

Finally, I can't help but ask everyone to come visit our CCBH Family Planning Clinic web page (www.ccbh.net, under nursing tab) and facebook page. We take great pride in the work of these pages and want to share it all with you!