Raz Talks to the new troupes/troops
Welcome Pilgrims your search has ended.
My name is Glenn Raswyck. My friends call me Raz.
I have been with Rock Medicine since 1980, first as a Volunteer and
Operations Supervisor then as a paid staff member of both the Haight
Ashbury Free Clinics as Director of Operations and also the Director of
Rock Medicine in 1993. I am the only paid staff member of Rock Medicine. I
want to thank the veteran volunteers, both presenters and supportive
persons, for helping to facilitate this 9th annual spring orientation.
In May RM will celebrate 28 years of event medical care. The orientation
is a way to meet and greet folks before you come to a show. It gets a
little "busy° at shows and rather than have you get lost in the shuffle,
ignored, or have you wind up feeling outside the box we feel this is a
more comfortable way of trying to explain to you the nuances that separate
Rock Medicine's way of approaching Event medical services from other forms
of medical service delivery systems.
We feel that RM not only offers a unique type of event medical coverage
but an entertaining learning and training experience. We pride ourselves
on being an outreach of the HAFC, out of which RM was created in 1973. The
HAFMC’s were created in 1967 during the Summer of Love. As pilgrims
descended on the Haight looking for the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow public health became a major concern. Dr. David Smith our founder
and current President opened the HA Free Medical Clinic. Soon after
opening the doors they quickly found that half the cases were substance
abuse problems. As Hunter Thompson just recently said to many "worshippers
of the Church of Too Much Fun". This became the beginning of the HAFC
Detox Program. All these programs are based on the belief that "Health
care is a Right not a privilege!!! If you understand and agree with this
statement then you have a pretty good grip on what RM is all about, The
presenters will touch upon some history, some philosophy, protocols, and
procedures, and go over some “dos and some don'ts". A lot of what you hear
may not make sense until you are at a show. A lot of information is common
sense, you will need back pack full of this, a lot of what we do is
standard medical care, and a lot of what we do is a standard of care that
we have developed over the 28 years of experience of working in the
concert environment. Our hope is that you learn a little from RM and that
RM learns something from you. I am the director of Rock Medicine but make
no mistake about this, the volunteers are RM I am just the keeper of the
keys, paperwork, and I also happen to know where the skeletons and secrets
are, kept. I will be back at the end of the presentations to explain some
of the inrirds of RM, how the office works, how to fill out apps and how
to sign up for shows. |
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