Using Their New Skills to Serve Others

IT’S AN HOUR before the doors open and 16 people are in line outside the free medical clinic that’s staffed and managed by students from Indiana University School of Medicine.

Located on the Near Eastside of Indianapolis in a building owned by Neighborhood Fellowship Church, the clinic draws patients each Saturday from all over the city. They are people with no insurance or meager coverage, elderly people from the surrounding neighborhood, and young immigrants from as far away as Nigeria.

When the doors open at 9 a.m., the seats in the waiting area fill almost immediately. Within 30 minutes, 34 patients have signed up for free care — the max the clinic can handle on a Saturday. Latecomers will have to come back next week — or on Wednesday night, for the abbreviated mid-week clinic.

IU School of Medicine students have been volunteering their services in outreach clinics — under the supervision of licensed physicians who are IU faculty — for 15 years, first in this relatively new storefront and earlier in the church building across East 10th Street. Mike Hale, a church elder, gushes about what it has meant to the “neighbors,” as the patients are called, regardless of how far they travel.

“The medical students are amazing. The clinic wouldn’t be in existence if it wasn’t for them. And they do a really good job,” Hale said. “If this clinic wasn’t here, people would not be getting preventative care.”

Through service to a local clinic or by volunteering in various health care settings located near all nine medical school campuses, IU School of Medicine students are finding ways to provide outreach to serve their communities.

Routinely, students provide services to patients in need of care for their high blood pressure or diabetes, and for minor acute illnesses, such as coughs and colds. As an enhancement to their educational experience, students put into practice what they’ve been learning in the classroom — taking medical histories, conducting physical exams, and suggesting a course of treatment, with guidance from faculty on hand.

And while their coursework includes interactions with standardized patients — essentially actors portraying patients — students at the outreach clinics get to treat people with real medical needs. “This is where I got my first patient interactions,” said Leonardo Olivera Perez, a fourth-year medical student who has served in the Indianapolis clinic all four years.

The rewards are especially meaningful to Briana Rayman, a third-year medical student at the West Lafayette campus. A native of Lafayette, she volunteers to provide care at the Crossroads Student Outreach Clinic, which opened in Fall 2023 and operates in space at IU Health Arnett Hospital. “It’s the community I grew up in,” she said, “so it really helps me feel like I’m giving back.”

In Terre Haute, students have been volunteering at the Mollie R. Wheat Memorial Clinic since 2013 and see patients who come from across the Wabash Valley. On a busy Saturday earlier this year, they had 26 patients, including three who spoke only Haitian Creole, presenting a new challenge for the students who had to find a translator.

For Luke Wilson, a third-year medical student who’s been volunteering at the clinic from year one, the clinic was a welcome reminder — during the theory- and sciences-heavy aspects of his first two years — of why he went into medical school. “It’s a good learning opportunity for us, and it’s a good resource for the community,” he said.

In Indianapolis, the clinic began in 2009 and now has more than 2,000 patient visits a year, with more than 800 student volunteers. The clinic’s cofounder, Javier Sevilla-Martir, MD, Professor for Underserved Indiana Patients at the School of Medicine, said those numbers make it the largest free student-run clinic in the United States. He sees it as an important connection to what medicine is truly about.

“It is a real-life experience for these students,” he said. “They establish long-lasting relationships with the community. And the community knows them by name.”