The annual conference drew more than 400 students from medical schools nationwide who are working with free clinics or are interested in establishing one.  Third-year students Erin Kane, Mike Arnold, Lynda Yu, Kayla Avery, Glenn Gookin offered two platform presentations and two poster presentations on the KNIGHTS Clinic, run in partnership with  Grace Medical Home near downtown Orlando. About 25 patients are receiving continuing care at the free clinic one night a month and the students have helped Grace ease a backlog of uninsured patients needing primary and specialty care.

Dr. Caridad Hernandez, the KNIGHTS Clinic faculty adviser, praised students for their dedication in making the facility successful. “The KNIGHTS Clinic is truly a student run clinic and I am so proud of what the student leaders have accomplished,” she said. “There has also been tremendous support from the entire COM student body and to date over 111 students from M-1 to M-4 years are active volunteers; that represents one-third of the entire study body!”

Kane and Avery’s 25-minute presentation, titled “Collaboration for Patient Care,” discussed how students collaborated with community organizations  to open the clinic. The Diebel Legacy Fund at the Community Foundation of Central Florida provided $10,000 to support the clinic and the Winter Park Health Foundation donated $5,000. “Students from other institutions were amazed by what we were able to set up so quickly being such a young school,” Kane said. “UCF was as well represented as many older, longer established schools and clinics.”

Yu’s poster presentation on  “Navigating the Challenges of an Affiliation Agreement between a şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą and a Private Free Clinic,” detailed how the College of Medicine was able to partner with the existing  Grace Medical Home.  “It was an honor to represent UCF COM and the KNIGHTS Clinic at the conference, to show our peers all that the clinic has accomplished in the past year.” Yu said. “The timing, with the clinic’s first anniversary the day before the conference, just made things even better.”

Another 25-minute platform presentation from Arnold titled: “Development of a Laboratory Training Module at a Student Run Free Clinic,” explained how students were trained to run the KNIGHTS Clinic’s lab and get more hands-on learning experiences. Gookin’s presentation on “Partnership between a Student-Run Clinic and a Private Medical Home” drew a great deal of interest. “At one point there was a line students and faculty waiting to ask me questions about the unique components of the project,” he said. “This reflects how fortunate we are to have such a successful collaboration with Grace Medical Home.”

The students have continually expressed their gratitude to their physician mentors, Dr. Marvin Hardy, director of Grace Medical Home,  Dr. Pinkal Patel, a family medicine specialist who works at the clinic and also is a preceptor to first- and second-year students, and core faculty members Drs. Hernandez and Judy Simms-Cendan, who helped guide them through the process of opening a medical clinic.

More than 100 students from every Florida medical school, nursing students, healthcare professionals and medical students from as far away as Oklahoma participated in the event.

“We wanted something that encompasses both a global aspect, but also something that we can manage everyday here in America,” said second-year UCF medical student Scott Furer, who helped lead the event. “We’re going to be seeing these types of patients all the time in our future practices.”

The keynote speaker was Dr. Rick Hodes, who has worked with Ethiopian refugees for more than 20 years. Through his work with the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Hodes has been in charge of the health of Ethiopians immigrating to Israel. Over the past two decades, he has served populations in countries like Zaire, Rwanda and Albania as they faced war, genocide and illness. Dr. Hodes detailed those experiences,  including a deadly Cholera outbreak in Rwanda, and the Goma-Zaire genocide that resulted in more than a half-million deaths. “Sometimes things are just unexpectedly crazy,” he said. “But you have to really be dedicated, you have to do the work, and you have to be able to work well with others.”

A panel of actual refugees from around the globe described their experiences moving to the United States. Hailing from countries like Iraq, Cuba and Egypt, one of the panelists had only been in the United States for two weeks, after emigrating from Myanmar.

Many fled their home countries because war and political conflict threatened the safety of their families. “The place I came from is filled with violence, and it is unpleasant for many people,” said Ali Al Shammarl, a recent refugee from Iraq.  “You have your family, your job, and at one point, you have to decide to leave all of that behind and go into the darkness.”

Their stories of pain – and hope through the assistance of Catholic Charities of Central Florida – were especially impactful to conference participants. “I lot of people thought it was an eye-opening experience because they didn’t know there were so many refugees around us,” said second year UCF medical student Neesha Patel, another conference leader. “It makes you think more about the people that you’re treating. There could be something else going on in their lives.”

The second half of the day involved workshops and simulations. A giant hospital tent stood on the front lawn of the College of Medicine, filled with actor-patients wearing professionally-applied makeup to simulate illnesses like jaundice and cholera. Others had bloody gashes and lacerations from an earthquake. Conference attendees interviewed and triaged the patients, often dealing with language barriers and panic.

In the Clinical Skills and Simulation Center, students interviewed costumed standardized patients – actors displaying symptoms of PTSD after coming to the United States from Syria. PTSD is a common mental health issue for refugees dealing with the combined stress of violence, natural disasters and leaving their homeland and support network, said College of Medicine Professor Dr. Martin Klapheke, a psychiatrist by specialty who led the simulation.  “It definitely takes the student out of their comfort zone because not only are they doing medical interviewing, but they have to look through the lens of how the trauma’s affecting the presentation, how cultural differences are affecting the presentation, and how being a refugee further complicates the presentation.” Dr. Klapheke said. After the simulation, the standardized patients provided feedback to the students. They urged the doctors-in-training to give them a chance to grieve before going on to the next question and praised them for not being put off by their angry outbursts and guilt.

The conference was made possible with the help of the Diebel Legacy Fund, a fund at the Community Foundation of Central Florida. The  organization was founded by the family of the late Dr. Don Diebel Jr., who was killed after stopping to help accident victims on the Florida Turnpike. The charitable group’s goal is to provide humanitarian support both domestically and abroad and to honor the good Samaritan role that Dr. Diebel embodied. His father, Dr. Don Diebel Sr. helped introduce the day’s events by saying,  “We welcome the opportunity to support the development of physicians who share these values of the Good Samaritan as exemplified by Dr. Diebel Jr. You’re fortunate to be in a place where your intelligence and curiosity can really be developed and allowed to blossom.”

Many of those students in attendance are members of MedPACt, a UCF College of Medicine group for students who are interested in caring for local and international communities in need. Dr. Deborah German, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the medical school, commended the students for their commitment to service.  “Whether you serve patients overseas or practice medicine in your hometown, you will see patients from all over the globe whose life experiences are drastically different from your own,” she said. “To be a healthy community, we must ensure that the weakest and the most in need receive compassionate and quality care.”

To see a video version of this story, visit

Her presentation will address the question, “What does it take:

Dr. Nutt is certified in family medicine and completed a sub-specialization in women’s health through the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Toronto as a Women’s Health Scholar. She has received numerous honorary doctorates from universities in the United States and Canada. She is a staff physician at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto and is an assistant professor of medicine at the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Toronto. She is executive director of War Child Canada/War Child USA. In her book, “Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies, and Aid,” she explains how “we are all a part of war,” through investments, commercial and other choices and how people can reduce civilian suffering by their choices.

“Dr. Nutt has witnessed the horrific suffering of civilians in wars across the globe. By sharing her journey at the College of Medicine, I hope she can help us all understand how we can better care for each other as global citizens,” said Dr. Judy Simms-Cendan, director of the medical school’s international health programs.

Dr. Nutt’s presentation will run from 7 to 8 p.m. in the Lewis Auditorium (Room 102) of the medical education building and be followed by a reception and refreshments.

“Social Responsibility & Global Health” is part of UCF International Education Week and is sponsored by the UCF College of Health and Public Affairs’ International Affairs Committee, the UCF College of Medicine and the Diebel Legacy Fund.

The free clinic is open one night a month, helping Grace Medical Home ease its waiting list of patients needing care. Students hope to increase their hours to twice a month and ultimately have the clinic open once a week. About 50 M.D. students staff the clinic and handle all operational duties, from checking in and escorting patients to exam rooms to drawing their blood for lab work. They take patient histories, conduct physical exams, determine diagnoses and provide treatment under the direct supervision of volunteer physicians from the College of Medicine. They also provide ongoing medical education to patients about taking their prescriptions and making healthy lifestyle changes.  Grace Medical Home physicians and staff partner with to the students, covering care of the patients if needed during times outside the KNIGHTS Clinic. So far the students have seen almost two dozen patients ranging in age from 19 to 64.

Tuesday’s open house coincided with Grace Medical Home’s third-year anniversary. The facility has enrolled 2,000 uninsured patients, who live below 200 percent of the nation’s poverty line, since it opened in May 2010. As a medical home, Grace’s approach is to provide a hub or home base where a patient’s medical history is known and their care is coordinated. Teams of physicians and other healthcare providers work together and share information to provide a comprehensive approach to primary care.

Third-year medical student Mike Arnold of Cocoa Beach is one of the leaders of the KNIGHTS Clinic. He and others provided tours of the facility Tuesday and explained how caring for uninsured patients helps students appreciate the impact of poverty on health and the challenges of maintaining a healthy lifestyle with limited income for food, lodging and medical care. The clinic provides teams of medical students for each patient – a more experienced third- or fourth-year M.D. student with an undergraduate student in their first or second year. “Teaching is a great way to learn,” Arnold said. “When upperclassmen can teach underclassmen, it’s a great learning tool.”

The Diebel Legacy Fund at the Community Foundation of Central Florida provided $10,000 to cover start-up costs for the free clinic.

Students are seeing patients with a variety of ailments, from injuries like broken bones and sprained ankles to chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure. One recent KNIGHTS Clinic patient hadn’t been to a doctor in 20 years. Dr. Dr. Marvin Hardy, medical director of Grace Medical Home, said that about one-fourth of Orange County’s population is uninsured. Students participating in the KNIGHTS Clinic “have that passion for taking care of those in need,” he said. “Now we can see more of the uninsured.”

One of those patients is Frank Coar, who called himself “a recipient of grace” at Tuesday’s open house. Five years ago, Coar left a career in corporate America to start his own high-tech business. But when the economy faltered, his business closed. He faced health insurance premiums of $1,200 a month – for insurance that wouldn’t cover his pre-existing heart disease and diabetes. He talked about watching the news about the new College of Medicine and UCF’s focus on partnership and collaboration and wondered how both would impact this community. “My story is not unique,” he said of his need for medical care. “For some reason, God put a medical school up the road at UCF. You students are going to make a difference.”

Patient education is a big part of making that difference. Students provide information to patients on subjects including weight loss, exercise, planning healthier meals and smoking cessation. Two of those educators are first-year medical students Page Druce and Scott Furer. Before coming to medical school, Pace was a pediatric nutritional educator. Scott taught elementary school students with dyslexia. They say some patients are afraid to talk to a doctor about their unhealthy lifestyles. Some are too intimidated to ask questions. Page and Scott say such patients find it easier to talk to a medical student and the two physicians-in-training encourage even the smallest progress. “We’re their marching band,” Scott says. “Page and I are both driven to patient education because it’s really the human part of medicine. It’s about connecting with patients and helping them make better changes for themselves.”