Students in the Physician Assistant program are among many students across the colleges at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center who volunteer to help provide free health care to the uninsured and underserved in the community at the Wellness and Stress Clinic (WSC) of Memphis.
Since the clinic’s opening in 2018, students from the College of Medicine, College of Nursing, and the College of Pharmacy have volunteered at the clinic, conducting exams, triaging, and interviewing patients. Every PA student volunteers at the clinic at least once during their didactic (first) year, and many choose to continue serving. In addition to primary care, the clinic offers services in social work, legal, and emotional fitness. They also work with faculty and students from other institutions that the clinic partners with, such as Rhodes College and the University of Memphis, to create a multidisciplinary team of care to serve patients and the community.
“The idea is to model the interprofessional team concept. The wonderful thing is we have so many programs at UT Health Science Center where we have the MD and PA program and others like pharmacy – it’s a given opportunity for students from each program to come together and work in a team atmosphere with clinical faculty from the College of Medicine, myself as a PA, and to serve uninsured patients in Memphis,” said Evan Ward, DHSc, PA-C, assistant professor in the Physician Assistant program.
Dr. Ward serves as a volunteer PA at the clinic and supervises the PA student volunteers, under the supervision of Austin Dalgo, MD, associate professor in the Department of Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine, and Shelley Ost, MD, associate professor and division chief of General Internal Medicine, both medical directors of the WSC.
“Our students have a wonderful educational opportunity and an opportunity to serve underserved and uninsured patients in Memphis,” Dr. Ward said. “We are blessed because we have students that have a servant’s heart and want to be involved in the community, and they want to learn and apply what they’re learning in the PA program to patient care.”
The clinic, located at 3885 Tchulahoma Road, is open on Mondays from 5 to 8 p.m. Its goal is to provide low-income residents with resources to improve their physical and emotional health.
“The medical visit starts with a team of PA students, like Joey and Isaac (first-year PA students), along with medical students, who take a thorough history and perform a physical exam for the patient,” Dr. Ward said. “Then they report back to either myself, Dr. Ost, or Dr. Dalgo, and we go back in to see the patient, complete the encounter and provide a thorough treatment plan along with any medication that may be needed.”
Isaac Johnson and Joey Vong are among the group of PA students serving at the clinic. Johnson and Vong said serving in the clinic is a chance to experience and apply what they are learning in their clinical courses and help patients in the community.
Vong, who began in February and continues to serve once a month, said her experience has been very near to her heart.
“I have met so many people there, not just medical students but also social workers, as well as Dr. Dalgo and Dr. Ost, and established these connections. They’re very important because you don’t get those while you’re in the didactic program,” Vong said. “It’s hard to reach out to medical students when we are so enclosed in the PA program. It gives you an opportunity to really work with other professionals and that’s who we are as PAs because we work under the supervision of physicians.”
Johnson began serving in June and said the experience changed how he thinks about practicing medicine.
“One thing in our didactic year we have been working on and discussing is the social determinants of health, and in this patient population that we are serving at the clinic those concepts and issues are very evident,” Johnson said. “A lot of these patients are experiencing adverse health outcomes that they have little to no control over, like their income, insurance status, and all the things we have been learning about, but to actually see how these things affect real individuals has been really eye-opening for me.”
Dr. Dalgo said the PA program has been a fantastic addition to the clinic. “The interdisciplinary education with medical students and PA students has created a great learning environment,” he said. “Dr. Ward teaches the students how to be a caring, humble provider modeling active listening and awareness of the social aspects of care.”
“We are thrilled to have the PA students work with us at the Wellness and Stress Clinic,” Dr. Ost said. “It gives us an opportunity to form true multidisciplinary care teams, learn from each other, and model how all of us can contribute to patient care and benefit from our interactions as a team.”
Darrel Kiner, director of the Wellness and Stress Clinic and social worker, said it is amazing having students serving at the clinic and that they have seen patients return to the clinic because they enjoyed their experiences.
“We work in an interdisciplinary team setting; we have PAs, medical students, social workers, and they all operate as a team to assess the patient but also get to know the patient for themselves and see them as a human and all of the things they are going through that could be affecting their health,” Kiner said. “Sometimes the medical students are teaching PA students things, and sometimes the PA students are teaching medical students things, so it’s a great learning environment for everyone, even our patients.”
This story was initially featured in the Winter 2025 issue of the College of Medicine Magazine.