The JayDoc Community Clinic, and the KU School of Medicine-Wichita medical students who lead and staff it, have a tradition: See a medical need, study how best to meet it, and then go do it.

The tradition began 10 years ago, when an idea - to provide medical care to the underserved - became the reality of providing health care on Saturday mornings, when Wichita's working poor could most readily access it.

Dr. Jennifer Koontz, now a sports medicine physician in Newton, helped found the JayDoc Free Clinic in Kansas City in 2003 while at the KU School of Medicine. After coming to the Wichita campus for her third and fourth years of medical school, she saw similar unfilled medical needs.

The goal: accessible care for the working poor

Before jumping in to start a JayDoc clinic in Wichita, Koontz and other students examined the services already provided by existing safety net clinics. What they discovered was an often insurmountable obstacle to receiving care: Many of the working poor hold jobs that make it difficult for them to go to clinics Monday through Friday during regular business hours.

Dr. Scott Moser, vice chair for education in KU School of Medicine-Wichita's Department of Family and Community Medicine, has been JayDoc's faculty adviser since its inception. He was an early booster of the students' plans.

"We presented the research and plans that we had created through student meetings, and he was immediately excited about the idea and supported us from the very beginning," Koontz said. "We started to identify potential partners in the community."

Partnership with Guadalupe Clinic

"When we compared our options, Guadalupe Clinic was the best fit," said Moser. "They had a desire to expand to Saturday hours, to better serve the working poor."

In the decade since, Guadalupe Clinic, a service of Catholic Charities, has been JayDoc's partner. It supplies a home, at 940 S. St. Francis, and staff each Saturday for the services JayDoc provides, including acute care for injuries and illnesses, diagnostic tests, medicine and medical equipment, and referrals to specialists, among others.

Just as there is no shortage of medical need, there has been no shortage of ideas and passion from the students to meet them.

Women with abnormal pap smears often could not afford expensive follow-up testing. So, in 2008, after getting a colposcope funded by a grant, JayDoc started a women's clinic on the second Tuesday evening of each month.

In 2012, led by students interested in chronic disease management, JayDoc began a diabetes clinic. Held the first Wednesday evening of the month, patients receive management care, as well as insulin, test strips, and other supplies.

Expansion to homeless outreach

In fall of 2014, JayDoc began a homeless outreach clinic in donated space just north of the Lord's Diner at Central and Broadway. Initially open two Thursday evenings a month, it will begin weekly service in early 2015. Like other JayDoc efforts, the outreach clinic evolved from students' initiative. When they realized that the homeless often have no means or access to transportation to get to a clinic ... they brought the clinic to them. The Lord's Diner was established as a communication center and gathering point for the homeless, so it was a logical choice of location.

"When students are able to be involved each year, new ideas and passions are always being integrated into the clinic," said Koontz, who still volunteers at JayDoc.

In the first 11 months of 2014, 90 medical students saw more than 350 patients at the main Saturday clinic, and were overseen by 31 volunteer physicians and assisted by 18 pre-med students. In addition, 41 medical students saw over 80 patients at the diabetes, women's health, and outreach clinics.

"A great learning experience"

For medical students with plenty of classroom learning and experience in shadowing, JayDoc delivers the hands-on training they crave.

"At most doctor's offices, when shadowing you just have to stand back and watch," said Caitlin Chiles, a fourth-year medical student and the clinic's senior executive director.

"It's a great learning experience for us," said Chiles, who has been a volunteer since she was an undergraduate at Wichita State University. "The doctors we have working with us really treat us as residents. We do the full history, do a diagnosis, and come up with a plan. They are great teachers; they understand this is a learning process. They let us do most of the work, and they step in with the patient management."

"You get to have the role of the doctor from start to finish and as a medical student you don't get many of those opportunities," said Dr. Tessa Rohrberg, a third-year Wesley Family Medicine resident who started volunteering at JayDoc while a Bethany College undergraduate.

Both Rohrberg and Chiles said JayDoc exposed them to elements of running a medical practice as well as practicing medicine. "First and foremost, I learned how to organize volunteers and the flow of the day," Rohrberg said. "Also, how to function as a team. The importance of being reliable. The patients depend on you to be there."

"Students are gaining valuable experience learning how to run a clinic - which will serve them well when they graduate and work as physicians," Koontz said.

"This is a student-run free clinic, and it's got to be the students who take this on," Moser said. "I do two things: One, I try not to get in the way of good ideas from students. Two, I run interference with people who might get in the way."

Students learn medical skills ... and life lessons

The clinic provides another tool that will serve students well in their practices: insight.

"JayDoc has exposed me to the social, economic, and resource aspects of care ... and practical thinking," Chiles said. "JayDoc patients are uninsured, and they may not be able to afford a C-scan. So we ask ourselves if they really need it. It forces you to think economically."

"I've definitely learned to look as the patient as a whole," Rohrberg said. "You have to take into consideration their mental, financial, and social health as well as their physical health and to use the resources at hand. I like to get to know patients for who they are instead of just treating their disease."

"When you see firsthand the devastation that can be created by lacking health insurance, it completely changes your perspective on our current healthcare system," Koontz said. "Students at KU School of Medicine-Wichita are so fortunate to be involved in this type of work because they will remember to always keep the heart of medicine at the forefront of their medical careers."

Exposure to people living in poverty opens the students' eyes ... and hearts. Chiles remembers well meeting her first JayDoc patient.

"A patient told me she just needed her blood pressure medicine," Chiles said. "I asked the infamous question, 'Anything else?' She laughed and said, 'Antidepressants.' We found out that she had been employed for many years at an aircraft company but had been laid off. Then her house burned down. Thankfully we were there for her. We were able to give her some medicine and give our support.

Having that as my first experience really opened my eyes. These people have stories that underlie their needs, and until you ask you don't know where they are coming from."