Packing (6/28) || Nina Nguyen

We started off bright and early in the morning for packing day. Unlike last year, this year’s packing was before training rather than after the social so we had to wake up earlier. Due to some address mishap we even ended up a few minutes late, but by the time we arrived at the right location we saw everyone else still loading off our packing materials so we were actually right on time. Alicia and I helped everyone unload materials from their cars and bring them up to the packing room. After everything had been transported, a sheet was sent out with our packing assignments. I was one of the people in charge of packing supplies for our clinic’s blood pressure station.

For the blood pressure station, our main job is to make sure that the automatic blood pressure machines are working, that we have enough batteries for all of the machines, and the manual blood pressure supplies are also working properly. We also had some automatic wrist blood pressure machines, so we need to make sure those are accurate as well. We divide up the tasks for each person and I got assigned to check all of the automatic blood pressure machines that we have. The majority of them looked untouched, but we still have to make sure. I went through the machine one by one and checked them by taking my own blood pressure. None of the blood pressure machines have batteries in them, so I was also putting batteries in them to test them out.

After going through and labeling which machines work, the date checked, and whether the box came with batteries, I started to help check the stethoscope used with the manual blood pressure equipment. Some of the stethoscopes were impossible to listen for, so we decided to leave those behind. Since everything was checked by our entire blood pressure packing team, and we were still deciding which way we wanted to pack the blood pressure supplies, our station was pretty much done. So I went around asking if anyone else needed help and ended up helping in testing out some blood glucose and cholesterol machines (by getting pricked), and also helping sealing some boxes from the other stations. After everything was wrapped up, we moved all of the boxes to one side of the room as other students trickled in for our medical training.

In comparison to packing last year, this year’s packing was definitely more organized and took way less time since we decided to source some supplies directly from Vietnam, such as school supplies for our Scholarship Program, and toys for our Hope Program. Personally, I felt like my time was spent more productively not having to search through every single clothes and toys donations like I did last year. Although we were a bit crunched on time to make sure the packing was done before medical training, I still tried to make sure everything was working properly since they will be important supplies needed to serve the community, and we ended up right on time thanks to the productivity and effort from everyone.

Jeffrey testing out the wrist blood pressure machines.

Mathew testing out the automatic blood pressure machines.

Everyone putting in collective effort.