My Story

The inspiration for my creation of the Collin Yee Foundation started from a trip where I traveled to Boca Del Toro in Panama in September 2022. During my time in Panama, I volunteered with an organization called Floating Doctors. Floating Doctors is a non-profit organization that is committed to decreasing the effect of disease on developing areas. The home base of Floating Doctors is located on an island called Isla Cristóbal which is just out side of Boca del Toro. At Base camp we stayed in dormitory like housing. During my time in Panama there were only two types of clinics which were  single day clinics and multi-day clinics. 

A typical day on single day clinic began at around 8 am when we left from the base camp to head to the village that we were scheduled to visit. Transportation from base camp was by boat and took roughly about an hour to reach. Once at the village we would have to set up the clinic and begin helping patients. The clinic would end when we have helped all the patients in the village which is most of the times the whole day.  For multi-day clinics, instead of returning to base camp at the end of the day, we would sleep in hammocks overnight at the village. Multi-day clinics are scheduled for villages that are a little farther away from base camp than usual and that have a large population that requires multiple days to see all the patients in the village.

During the clinic, for both single and multi day clinics, we would have 5 separate stations which each had their own role in helping the clinic run smoothly. The 5 stations were administration, triage, intake, provider and pharmacy. When a patient arrived at the clinic, if they were a chronic patient then they would come straight to administration to check-in. Chronic patients are already in the system so I just had to create an appointment of the given day and enter any information that could be of use for the provider. If a patient was not a chronic patient then they would have to go to triage to see a provider. At triage, the doctor would evaluate the the severity of the problem and if the problem could be fixed quickly then that doctor would handle it themselves. If the doctor in triage determines it is not a quick fix then they would send the patient to administration to check-in and make an appointment. New patients from triage are not in the system, so the people at administration must create a profile for the new patient and add all their personal information. Once a profile was made they would then create an appointment and add any information that could be helpful to the provider as done before. After the patient has checked into administration and an appointment was made, they would be called into intake. Intake is a station that is designated to checking the vitals of the patients prior to seeing the doctor. We took vitals like height, weight, blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, oxygen level, and respiratory rate. After intake the patient would go to the provider station which is where they would see a doctor to diagnose the problem. If the doctor needs to get any medication for the patients they would go to pharmacy. At pharmacy they would tell the station what medication they needed, how much and the directions to for how to use the medication. The people at pharmacy would gather the medicine and write instructions for the patients on how to use it. People at pharmacy were also responsible for tracking the medicine that was distributed as the inventory for much of the medicine was extremely limited. 

The 5 stations made up the main medical clinic however there were 2 other stations that include the dental and veterinary areas. At the dental station villagers could get their teeth checked, cleaned and even removed if need. Villagers could also take their pets to see the veterinary station to remove any parasites, get spayed/neutered or treat any other problems the animal may have. The mobile clinic was not focused just on medical needs for individuals, but instead focused on providing a holistic service which includes helping with oral care and the animals in the community.

For the communities that we visited, many of the patients that we encountered relied solely on our service to get the proper healthcare they needed. Even though many of these communities lacked access to any local medical help, they all embraced a sense of community in their villages that was very surprising to me. At the clinic you could see children running around playing with smiles and adults cooking big meals which looked like enough food for 50 people. These people in remote communities must unite as a village in order for them to survive in the areas they live in. Without access to proper healthcare services, many of these patients could become very ill or die from diseases that are easily treatable by any urgent care in the United States. Our duty as part of this mobile clinic is to make these healthcare services accessible to them so they have equal access to basic treatments just as we do.