Free clinic for homeless inspires students, patients
Undergrads compete to volunteer at free clinic for poor and homeless.
In the heart of a downtown Austin block where homeless adults congregate and seek shelter at night, some of the brightest college students gather in a nearby building. They place chairs around long tables, check supplies and sling stethoscopes around their necks.
The free C.D. Doyle Clinic is open for business.
In this airy space provided by the nonprofit Trinity Center, an unusual pairing of highly motivated students and homeless men and women interact in ways that shape lives and inspire gratitude.
When the doors open at 2 p. m., the first patients, some bent by backpacks, enter through tall, arched doors at Seventh and Trinity streets, part of the complex of St. David’s Episcopal Church, which created Trinity Center to help Austin’s poor and homeless residents. Some come to the clinic — open 2-5 p.m. the first
three Sunday afternoons of each month — with wounds slow to heal. Others are ill with a cough or need help managing blood pressure, diabetes and other conditions.
Unpaid student volunteers, mainly from the University of Texas, run the clinic, some as young as freshman Sunghyun Song who is 19 and plans to go to medical school. Like a dozen or so other undergraduates, he worked with a partner on a recent Sunday to interview patients, write notes in a medical chart and check patients’ vital signs.
Several medical school students were also there to examine patients, and David Wright, a family practice doctor in Austin known for his care of needy and vulnerable residents, was the physician volunteer this Sunday. He would end up seeing 11 of the 16 patients and signing off on the students’ treatment plans — or tweaking them, if necessary.
“This is an opportunity ... for them to do independent thinking and independent problem-solving,” said Wright, one of a half-dozen doctors who takes a turn at the clinic. “Most of the students who are here are very gifted. They feel pretty comfortable with the patients we serve here.”
Demand from undergraduates who want to volunteer has outpaced the current need, said the clinic’s director, Casey Sharpe. The 28-yearold, fourth-year medical student cites Jack Kerouac as an influence and is intrigued by the stories the patients tell about their lives.
The students say they love the volunteer work and what they are learning about how to talk to patients. The patients say they are listened to — without being judged — and feel comfortable here.
“It’s a really rare and invaluable opportunity our undergraduates get to interact, one-on-one, with the patients,” said Michael Leung, one of the undergraduate clinic directors. “I remember volunteering at hospitals in high school, and you either follow someone around or sit at a desk. ... At our clinic, we let our undergraduates assess the patient. I think it’s really cool to be able to talk to the patients.”
Leung, a 20-yearold biochemistry major at UT, has been involved with the clinic for 1½ years and also helps spread the word about it, passing out fliers to people on the streets.
He worked with Song to assess Anthony Benford, 50, who first came to the clinic when he was homeless. Benford is now sober and has an apartment and a job but no health insurance. He tells the two students he has a cough and congestion. He admits to smoking 10 cigarettes a day but adds that he’s pretty certain he doesn’t have Ebola.
As Leung takes his blood pressure and Song places a pulse oximeter on Benford’s finger to get a blood oxygen level, Benford remarks that he’s amazed by the students. “Shame and guilt keep a lot of us from asking for help,” he said, but here he finds “gentle concern and understanding. ... I feel they get to know the person.”
Some volunteers already have degrees but are undergrads again, aiming for medical school. David Magness, 35, was a patent lawyer but fell in love with medicine as a military medic.
While volunteering at the clinic looks good on a medical school application, “honestly, it’s so fulfilling on its own,” said Avalynn Ly, a 21-yearold senior in neurobiology. “The hardest part is knowing what questions to ask and presenting the information most accurately to the doctors.”
The clinic was founded in 2011 by students from the UT Medical Branch at Galveston, which sends some third- and fourthyear medical students to Austin for clinical training. The founders wanted to replicate a similar free clinic in Galveston because they knew they would miss it when they’re sent to Austin, said Sharpe, the director. Michael Leasure, a founder of the Doyle clinic who is now a doctor in training, said C.D. Doyle was a close friend from high school who died of Ewing’s sarcoma not long before the clinic opened.
“We wanted to honor his perseverance and channel that into our new free clinic since we knew the mounting health care needs of Austin’s impoverished would not be easy to address,” Leasure wrote in an email to Sharpe.
The clinic is funded by small grants, including from UTMB and the St. David’s Foundation. A goal is to reduce unnecessary emergency room visits, Sharpe said. Patients and volunteers benefit from the interactions, he added.
“It feels really nice to take care of people who are unaccustomed to having that care, and they really appreciate you taking care of them,” Sharpe said. “That’s the selfish reason I do this — because it feels good to me.”
Being one of their patients is “a privilege,” said Benford, who received Mucinex and Claritin for his respiratory ailments. “I’m just grateful,” he said. “It’s priceless.”