“They also serve who only stand and wait.” This phrase of poet John Milton sums up the essence of quiet service, those individuals, without any titles or acknowledgement, contributing to society. For medical students, serving in public health camps is just such a quiet and transformative experience. It is not just about helping doctors or checking blood pressure; it is about becoming kind, flexible and aware of people’s needs.

Building right attitudes: Towards empathy, compassion and selflessness
Medical school training has a tendency to focus more on academic and technical skills. However, the essence of medicine lies in leading with empathy, integrity, and a deep commitment to serving others. Community projects for medical students allow them to find out firsthand the gaps in healthcare and, in doing so, develop such qualities. Working among underprivileged populations, listening and learning from them and offering them non-critical support helps medical students become better-empathizing physicians.

Areas of engagement: A hands-on experience
Public health camps offer diversified learning opportunities for all student groups in medical school. They include:

•    Medical registration and documentation support: Supporting walk-in registrations, updating and verifications of basic medical records and enabling people to enroll for government schemes such as Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) or linking Aadhaar for medical schemes.

•    Basic clinical observation: Heart rates, temperature, pulse rates and saturations are basic clinical measurements and are commonly measured and charted by students.These tasks provide valuable opportunities for students to develop clinical leadership through patient interaction , confidence in communicating and developing empathy. 

•    Distributing and educating patients about medications: Students can help distribute basic medications or vitamins, educate recipients on dosage, side effects and adherence and teach them when to return for a check-up.

•    Care navigation and prescription review: Higher level students can help teach and counsel patients concerning their medications and teach them what is coming next, lab work, specialist appointments, or hospitalization.

•    Non-medical contributions: Volunteers assist in crowd management, triage and logistics coordination, all necessary elements to a well-structured health camp.



A broader view: Community-based versus hospital-based care
One of the most significant lessons learnt through public health camps is that healthcare based in a community is essentially dissimilar to hospital-based operations. While hospitals deal with well-established clinical cases, more extensive societal-medical problems are addressed in community camps. 

For instance, urban slum or rural area camps accentuate conditions like tuberculosis, malnourishment and waterborne and vector-borne diseases. Volunteers witness elderly citizens struggling to move, people in sub-poverty conditions without access to ongoing care and populations exposed to poor sanitation and lack of adequate information. 

This experience helps students to understand the root causes of health issues and prepares them to take the lead in promoting prevention, education and treatment in the community. For many individuals, especially those living below the poverty line, visiting a hospital means losing a day's income. This economic burden often discourages timely medical care and underscores the importance of accessible community-based health services that minimize financial disruption. 

Learning flexibility and quick thinking
Public health clinics don't have to be technically well-equipped to be effective. They are often based in schoolrooms, open areas, or temporary tents and count on relying on volunteers to be flexible. Limited medical gear, unpredictable patient flow, and real-time situational problem-solving teach students to be resourceful and efficient.

Learning to improvise, speak local dialects or even to survive without electricity and Wi-Fi facilitates critical problem-solving.  Such practical skills can't be learned through books but are necessary for a medical professional.

Collaboration among professional skills and soft skills
They work together in public health camps with nurses, community health workers, local non-governmental organizations, government officials, and even teachers in schools or panchayat leaders. This intercross-profession collaboration is a training ground for them wherein they learn to respect all professionals in healthcare and value teamwork.

Also, through frequent encounters with the public, the students gain very important soft skills—patience, time management, communication and emotional intelligence. Breaking down medical slang, convincing an elder to get screened, calming a frustrated parent—these are not merely clinic moments, these are what form a student's character.

Management, networking and leadership
By taking initiative to conduct or coordinate health camps, they gain hands-on understanding in planning, management, and mass communication. From enlisting volunteers to making arrangements for supplies, or even setting timetables, they develop organizational and leadership skills that will serve them for a lifetime.

Furthermore, these experiences offer opportunities for networking—both with academic faculty, public health administrators, government agencies, and other public health professionals. These networks will eventually lead to research opportunities, internships, or even policymaking and public health advocacy.

A step towards holistic medical education
Volunteering during public health camps cannot be considered an extra activity—it is an intrinsic part of holistic medical training. It acts both as a bridge between theory and practice and inculcates humanistic values necessary for the vocation.

While India integrates its healthcare service through community-based interventions, its young doctors need to understand ground realities. Volunteering for public health is an optimum method to integrate young medical professionals with national health goals and community well-being.

Finally, education transcends medicine. It's a question of being an active citizen, a compassionate human, and a physician aware of what it's like to serve.

Dr. Rekha Arcot is Dean, Dr. D.Y. Patil Medical College, Hospital & Research Centre, Pimpri, Pune.