Published February 2004

Nonprofit clinic a resource for community,
students in health care

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

In the last quarter of her medical assistant program, Elida Perrault will spend more than 200 hours at a health-care facility gaining practical training in a field she has come to think of as not just a job, but a lifelong career.

For her hands-on experience, the Everett Community College student won’t travel far, just down the road to the College Plaza Shopping Center, where the Providence Everett Healthcare Clinic recently opened to serve low-income and uninsured patients.

The nonprofit clinic, which opened Jan. 19 at 1001 N. Broadway, operates with a handful of paid staff that includes nurse practitioners, medical assistants and a nurse manager, said Dr. Tony Roon, Providence Everett Medical Center’s medical director of health-care access.

Students and volunteers in the health-care field will supplement that work force, he said.

Clinic Manager Lisa Carroll estimates that as many as 20 students will be rotating through the clinic each quarter from nursing and health professions programs at Everett Community College, the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of Washington, Bothell.

Because of the variety of health-care students, from those working toward medical assistant certificates to those working toward a master’s degree in business health administration or nursing, “there’s a wide range of what students will do,” she added.

For example, one student from the University of Washington School of Nursing will be involved in setting up a database to track standards of care in diabetes patients as part of the Washington State Diabetes Collaborative, said Eleanor Bond, a professor at the nursing school. Other students will be working on a project to disseminate health-care information to non-English speaking patients.

And then there are those students who will be working directly with patients on a daily basis.

Students like Perrault, who plans on putting in 40 hours or more each week to offer primary-care services.

“It’s such a great opportunity,” the Arlington resident said. “The group that we’re ‘externing’ with is a great group; our heart is really into the job.”

The clinic, which opened after a 10-month fund-raising campaign that collected more than $1 million in community donations, offers primary and preventative care as well as care for chronic medical conditions, immunizations and health education.

In its first year, the clinic expects to book 8,800 medical appointments, Carroll said, adding that the number could grow to 19,000 annually within four years.

“It’s such a great outreach,” Perrault said of the clinic.

And it’s a useful training tool for future health-care providers, Bond said.

“You get the theory component in the classroom and the practical, hands-on training in the health-care internships,” Bond said.

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