Jeanie Schmidt Free Clinic Celebrates Partnership with George Mason University

The Jeanie Schmidt Free Clinic and George Mason University celebrated a new partnership between the two organizations on Wednesday.

The PATH program, or Partners for Access to Healthcare, allows GMU nursing students and staff the ability to learn and get experiences in their field while increasing access to health care for area residents in need.

The nurse practitioners and students taking part in the program work in the clinic on Fridays—a day that the Jeanie Schmidt Free Clinic was unable to be open otherwise, providing more days and times for people to receive care.

The program is a faculty practice plan, where nurse practitioners provide the primary and mental health care and nurse educators provide patient education. Additionally, nurse researchers evaluate clinical and behavioral outcomes of the patients.

The school is able to implement the program with the aid of a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Health Services and Resources Administration. The grant also allows graduate and undergraduate students opportunities for service learning experiences.

“I just think this partnership is just perfect,” said clinic founder Jeanie Schmidt. Schmidt said the clinic was started as the Herndon Clinic but after it was well established and she moved away it was renamed in her honor. She said she is excited that students will get more experience through the program and the clinic is able to serve more patients.

Shirley Travis, dean of GMU’s College of Health and Human Services, said the PATH program is everything they hoped it would be. She said students and faculty get to work together and students aren’t reading three-year-old clinical studies out of a book. Instead they’re hearing about current clinical experiences their instructors are dealing with.

Kathy Dickman, director of the PATH program, said she began volunteering with the clinic when it was still being held in Herndon Middle School. She said when they learned about the possible resources they could receive she thought it would be a good fit to partner with the Jeanie Schmidt Free Clinic.

She said students all the way from undergraduate, to graduate to Ph.D. candidates are able to learn and work side-by-side because of the clinic. She said the clinic has many success stories, such as a man who lost his job and health care and was very ill due to diabetes and hypertension. The clinic helped him get well again and he was able to go back to finding and working a full time job, and now has insurance.

Meagan Ulrich, executive director of JSFC, said “These kinds of partnerships are really critical for us.” She said much of the clinic’s funding is on hold after Attorney Gen. Ken Cuccinelli II (R) ruled that some state funding to charities violates the Commonwealth of Virginia’s constitution.

Ulrich said with funding being held up the clinic needs all the support it can get, whether it’s through more volunteers or monetary support from the community. “We’ll do it because we need to do it,” she said.