For Interns
Asniya is a program designed to teach Native American children who live in remote and underprivileged communities about medicine and careers in health care. Medical, nursing and other allied health care students ("Asniya interns"), usually in one of their senior years of training, are selected and assigned to a junior high or high school on a South Dakota Indian reservation to teach in the classroom for one month. Although Asniya is designed as a four-week program, giving the intern and the children an optimal experience, and it is strongly recommended that Asniya interns serve a full four weeks, abbreviated visits can be arranged and extended visits welcome. Asniya is structured as an elective, and students receive credit, usually toward community or family medicine. While clinical opportunities are made available that the interns are encouraged to take part in, the focus of Asniya is teaching and interacting with the children... to instill within them a vision of careers in heath care.
The Asniya intern immerses her/himself in the culture and environment of the children - serving as a role model and teaching on the children's terms. We have become a welcomed, positive influence, and we are received warmly each year we visit. But the work is hard. Interns must be driven, independent, and even courageous, as they independently embody the program during their stay on the reservation. They also must be perceptive, empathetic, compassionate, and sensitive to the culture in which they are a guest.
Interns teach in the classroom on diverse topics in medicine from surgery to STD's to depression, and they may arrange field trips and special training, such as CPR. They also serve as role models for students who may be troubled by personal, peer, and family conflicts. Medical students selected as Asniya interns will receive orientation before they travel to their assigned site.
Asniya interns are provided with teaching materials, slide presentations, teaching aids, and video footage of medical procedures. Stethoscopes, basic first aid kits, and informational materials are incorporated into animated and interactive presentations to stimulate interest and help teach fundamental concepts. Classroom presentations are made daily, usually during science or health class. Teaching ends by 3:00 pm, allowing the interns to pursue other interests for the remainder of the day, such as clinical shadowing activities arranged by the program at various Indian Health Service (IHS) facilities.
Asniya interns will be assigned to a school on one of the five following Native American reservations:
- Crow Creek Sioux Tribe, SD
- Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, SD
- Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, SD
- Rosebud Sioux Tribe, SD
- Ogalala Sioux Tribe, SD
To see a map of South Dakota with the above reservations listed, click here.
Thank you for considering serving as an Asniya intern. If you choose to undertake this, and if you are like your predecessors, you will leave the reservation with one of, if not the richest and most rewarding experiences of your medical training. And you will want to go back.