Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROPOSAL

Service Learning Proposal

Mollie Morrissey
Ferris State University

Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROPOSAL

Abstract
As my third semester of Ferris States nursing program approaches, I am getting ready to begin
my service learning. I will be spending 30 service hours with Lacks Enterprises Medical Center,
which is an occupational health office. Throughout this paper, I will be describing the agency,
my role as a student nurse, objectives which are related to the nursing program, an evaluation
plan, and contact information for my agency. Working with this organization will give me a
different view on nursing, a different aspect in it. I am very interested in the office work of being
an RN, so doing my service learning with Lacks Medical Center will give me a great view, while
still working also with patients.

Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROPOSAL

Introduction
Luckily nursing is an avenue of many work opportunities for individuals who have a
nursing degree. My whole life I thought of nurses as individuals who took care of you at the
hospital and the doctors. These past few months in the nursing program I am learned it is much
more different than that. Ferris nursing program allows for their student nurses to work in many
different aspects of the field in clinical. I have already explored a few different options at
Mecosta County Medical Center, my favorite being in rehab. Moving on into the third semester
we are given the opportunity to pick a agency on our own and spent service hours, volunteering
and learning about different nursing fields. I have shown an interest in working more on an
office, but still with patient contact and the Lacks Medical Center fit perfectly into that. This will
give me an opportunity to spend time on something that really interests me and shows me if this
is something I would like to do. Service learning with be a great learning experience for me and I
will benefit very much from it.

Lacks Medical Center

Lacks Enterprises is a manufacturing company in Grand Rapids. Lacks offers to their

employees an occupational health office on site which is called the Lacks Medical Center. They
perform pre employment physicals, physicals for workers that are injured at work or are coming
back from an injury, and also actual physicals that are done by the physician, Dr. Bursch. No
employee is allowed back to work who has been off for medical reasons without the physical
done and employees can no stop working at Lacks until a pre employment physical is done. The
Lacks family has donated money to St. Marys Hospital which has turned into the Lacks Cancer

Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROPOSAL

Center. The founder of Lacks Enterprises, Richard Lacks Sr. was diagnosed with cancer and has
passed away. Many of his grand kids are on the board at the Lacks Cancer Center.

Volunteer Role

I will be volunteering for 30+ hours at the Lacks Medical Center doing different tasks. I
will be helping Dr. Bursch with taking BP, weight, temperature, urine tests and assisting him
with getting the rooms ready each employee. I will be helping the RN, Barb Kladder, BSN, with
vision tests and hearing tests. She will also show me the billing/insurance side of the medical
aspect. Any flu shots that need to be given I will also be allowed to do. I not only will be doing
patient contact work, but also I will be taught how the office side of nursing works, which is
something I have a interest in doing once I graduate. Ill get to learn all of this also in a out of
school context with people I am not familiar with so it will help my learning techniques.

Objectives R/T Nursing

I hope that I learn more the office work/business side of nursing. We had speakers
come to our clinical in post conference who did that at MCMC and I really found it interesting. I
love patient care, but to have more choices makes it so much more worth it. I dont think I will
have much opportunity to see that part of it with how busy our rotations are, so I can get a
focused learning experience this way. I hope that I do get to give flu shots because now that I can
pass medications, I really enjoy it and I think it will be very beneficial to me to do this to
employees also. They have 20-30 pre employments Tuesday-Fridays so I know that I will be
very busy, meeting new people, all different races and ages and that will be good experience for
me also. This seems like more of a doctor office setting, which will also be a good focused area

Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROPOSAL

for me to learn about. I will be there to help and assist and give the Dr. and RN a view on a
current nursing student. Barb has been a nurse for over 30 years and Dr. Bursch is close to
retirement, seeing and hearing there point of views will be very helpful to me and them!

Activities

I know that I will be getting urine samples done, to check for drug tests. I will be
filling out paperwork that goes back to the HR determining if they are eligible or not. For the
patients that are coming back from medical leave or had an injury at work, I will be helping Dr.
Brusch with assessments. I will be giving BP, manually, which I havent done since lab, so that
will give me really good practice. I will be filling out and seeing how the paperwork, insurance
and billing aspect of a medical agency works also. If I volunteer during times when employees
want flu shots, I will be able to give those to them, if the opportunity comes up.

Evaluation

I will make sure that the tasks that I am given to do are done in an orderly fashion.
Everything that I know and have learned I will bring into play while I am on the service learning
experience. I will be helping not only be helping the company, its future and current employees
but, also the Dr. and RN who run Lacks Medical Center. I want to make sure that I am learning
this different aspect of nursing that I can get a perspective and an idea on if I see myself in this in
the future.

Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROPOSAL

References
Bell, C., Horn, B., & Roxas, K. (2007, May). We know it's service, but what are they learning?
Preservice teachers understandings of diversity. Equity and Excellence in Education,
40(2), 123133.
Http://www.healthgrades.com/group-directory/michigan-mi/grand-rapids/lacks-enterprisesmedical-center-4c64aaff
Http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/colleges/alliedhe/Nursing/homepage.htm

Appendix

Running head: SERVICE LEARNING PROPOSAL

Contact Information includes Barb Kladder, RN BSN, 2120 43rd St, SE Suite 500 Grand Rapids,
MI 49512. Phone number to reach her is 616-455-5443 and her email address is
b.kladder@lacksenterprises.com