Measuring the Pulse of MCV Campus

VCU Medical Students Make a Difference through CARITAS

Once a month, Leslie Brown, works to make a difference in the Richmond community with the skills she is learning at the Medical College of Virginia.

Brown and several other first- and second-year medical students work with CARITAS- Congregations Around Richmond Involved To Assure Shelter. This program allows the students to set up a clinic at a Richmond-area location – typically a church – to provide free medical services to the city’s homeless population.

Although CARITAS has existed for over 20 years, VCU became involved with the program in 2003. Thanks to the efforts of Gaynel Olsen, director of the VCU Medical Center’s School of Family Medicine’s Inner City Program, MCV became the program’s sole provider of medical care and education by 2005.

Since then, Olsen has worked hard to ensure continued funding for the clinics, through grants and sponsorships.

"When we started in 2003, our entire clinic was run out of a single canvas bag," she said. "Now it’s quite a process to unload all of our gear. With the help of the students, though, it’s very easy. We’re instant – just add water, and boom, you’ve got a clinic!"

Students usually arrive at a site in the late afternoon to set up several treatment and testing stations. Services offered include: blood pressure monitoring, glucose readings, cholesterol screenings and temperature tests. The clinic, usually lasting between one and two hours, may provide treatment to nearly 100 guests.

"The population we’re usually presented with is very prone to hypertension, diabetes, and asthma," Olsen said. "It’s a good way for students to apply skills that will be in their arsenal for their entire careers."

While it may be good practice, the program is not just about students honing their medical skills and knowledge.

"One of our main goals is to help students put a face on the homeless," Olsen said. "It’s important for medical practitioners to be compassionate and altruistic to do their jobs well."

For Sang Kim, a second-year VCU medical student in the program, that goal has been achieved.

"I really feel like the guests do more for us than we do for them," Kim said. "Seeing someone you’ve treated later, outside of the clinic, is a special feeling that I think few people get to experience." Although students receive no academic credit from volunteering in the program, at the end of each year, they prepare a presentation for the School of Medicine that shows what they’ve learned from CARITAS.

For Brown, the experience has had a powerful effect. Already, she says, her time treating guests at CARITAS has taught her more than any textbook could.

For more information on CARITAS clinics, please visit www.caritasshelter.org.

The following articles - written by VCU Journalism Students - examine the medical school's legacy, student life, programs, buildings and future. All students are from Professor Bonnie Newman Davis' MASC 303 Newswriting Course. Loren Pritchett assisted in editing the articles.