The WVU School of Nursing, the WVU School of Pharmacy, the WVU School of Medicine, and First Presbyterian Church have collaborated to provide clinical service as an outreach program for people experiencing homelessness and poverty in the Morgantown area. Some of the services include checking vital signs, blood glucose screenings, glaucoma screenings, health education and pharmaceutical education.
WVU School of Nursing Clinical Assistant Professor Dana Friend and her husband Dr. Christopher Martin, who attend First Presbyterian Church on Spruce Street, volunteer at a pancake breakfast the church sponsors every Sunday. The breakfast is held from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the church gymnasium and is open to everyone. Friend was approached by breakfast organizers about the possibility of offering healthcare services. Friend reached out to her colleague Stephanie Young to get the WVU School of Nursing involved with the clinical services. The WVU School of Pharmacy was looking for clinical sites and got involved as well.
The WVU School of Nursing and the WVU School of Pharmacy were able to quickly come together and decided to provide their services to the outreach program on the first Sunday of every month. They invited the WVU School of Medicine, specifically Dr. John Nguyen, an ophthalmologist, to provide eye exams and glaucoma screenings. Each practice brings students along to participate and gain experience and service hours.
“There are hands-on opportunities for our students to get vital signs and weight, blood glucose monitoring and then, of course, just one-on-one education,” Young said.
Jonathan Olson is a nursing student who has participated in this outreach program. Like many nursing students, Olson sought opportunities to reach the service hour requirement. He was approached to see if he would like to get involved with the clinical services initiative.
He was recently able to screen five people, taking their temperatures, weight, and heart rates. Olson said he believes this is a great initiative and would love to go more often and continue building a relationship with the people they serve, even if he just served them breakfast. He said he hopes the relationship would then make them feel comfortable enough for him to take vitals.
After the program launch, Clinical Lecturer Sydney Wiley has since taken the lead. Young told Wiley about the initiative and she was eager to join. She leads the nursing students in performing health assessments and guides them to ask the appropriate health history questions.
“I work in psychiatry as a nurse for WVU Medicine and it’s really drawn me to become active in the community, especially for the indigent population,” Wiley said. “Doing this makes me think of things I could do in my clinical practice to improve my assessment skills.”
Young believes this collaboration needs to be taken slowly in order to gain the trust of the community. They want the people to feel comfortable so they take advantage of the services available to them. Young feels education is a big part of this too, being able to answer questions and talk about concerns people may have. So far through these clinical services, they have identified a need to get dentistry involved and hope that will happen in the future.
“Sometimes it can feel like we have invaded their space. Oftentimes, I suppose, healthcare providers, nurses, can be ambitious. We want to just go in and try to fix things, but it very much has to be a collaboration and a partnership among us, the church, the folks who attend, getting them to trust us. We want them to know that they're not guinea pigs for research,” Young said. “We plan to do no research on this. We recognize that they're a vulnerable population, so we just want them to know that they can trust us, and we're not going to take advantage of them.”
Youngs says this is a way to be visible in the community. Even church goers enjoying the pancake breakfast have taken advantage of the opportunity to get screened. She feels that the more folks who attend the more comfortable the community will feel about the initiative.
These groups have collaborated to help people as a team. Young hopes to see this collaboration grow, bringing in more services and maybe even have more than one clinic day a month.
“It's been a nice interprofessional collaboration. I think that as we get more students involved, it'll be a good way for them to see the various disciplines working together to meet community needs,” Young said. “I believe that it takes a village, we have to collaborate, we can't work alone…, we have to work together, and we all benefit from working together.”
-WVU-
bc/05/01/2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Holdren
Director of Communications and Marketing
WVU School of Nursing
304-581-1772; wendy.holdren@hsc.wvu.edu