Kalisa Lum
Incoming medical students and siblings, Kalisa and Joshua Lum, also twins, recently responded to the demand for support at the SACHS clinic in San Bernardino providing assistance at a COVID-19 drive-thru testing site. After hearing about a community staff shortage to adequately operate COVID-19 testing drive-thru lines, they signed up with a temp agency and became “runners” for the testing site, located at Loma Linda University Health – San Bernardino Campus.
“On our first day as ‘runners’ at the testing site, we walked over five miles in a four-hour shift,” said Kalisa, an incoming first-year medical student at the School of Medicine who is finishing her last year of college through distance learning. Kalisa and her twin brother, Joshua, will both start medical school in August 2021.
The siblings both served as runners at the site, which are critical to the operation of the testing process. Runners walk from car to car to gather important identification information about each person waiting to be tested, running the information back to the testing site for processing.
“I have the opportunity to help and also learn from my exposure to the patients needing to be tested,” Joshua said. “This experience confirms the love I have for medicine and being on the frontlines in a crisis. I know I am needed and doing what I am meant to do.”
Meanwhile, nearly 70 medical students are serving a critical role at the Drayson Center every Thursday to help administer COVID-19 vaccinations to thousands of community members.
Lynda Daniel-Underwood, MD, associate dean of Curriculum Evaluation and Learner Assessment, who has been supervising students at the Drayson Center vaccine clinic, says working alongside frontline healthcare workers allows the students to have additional clinical experience and put their skills to use.
“After logging in over 21,000 steps at the vaccine clinic while supervising students giving injections, observing patients in the post-vaccination area, and being a runner to supply syringes and other items to vaccinators,” Daniel-Underwood said, “it refreshes my heart to know our community is being protected.”
For more information about Loma Linda University, visit llu.edu/heroes.
Information about and appointments for COVID-19 vaccination are available a lluh.org/vaccine.