By Padra Lor, student writer, Institute for Community Engagement and Scholarship
Health care clinics aren’t often thought of as competitive spaces, but as Dr. Debra Eardley recounts, a group of young men often visited the free blood pressure clinic vying for the best blood pressure numbers. “Guess what I’ve been doing? I’ve been eating more vegetables!” “I’ve been running!” “I’ve been riding my bike!” Dr. Eardley enthusiastically narrates the conversations that took place over the community meal that accompanies the clinic. With the creation of the Partners in Prevention (PIP) clinic—a continuation of the free blood pressure clinic at the Center of Changing Lives—opening for the first time this fall, the goals mirror those of the young men: get conversations started about health promotion and disease prevention to spark positive changes.
Dr. Eardley began working at Metro State University in 2013 as a professor in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. The courses she teaches reflect her areas of expertise in nursing, public health, and community well-being. With a dual commitment to high quality student learning and reciprocal community partnerships, Dr. Eardley established Partners in Prevention community clinic, a free community-based clinic located in the Center for Changing Lives in the Phillips West neighborhood of Minneapolis. The clinic began as a collaboration with Metro State, Southside Community Outreach, and HueMan Partnership and ran from 2014–2018 with a focus on blood pressure health for health promotion and disease prevention.
Fast forward to today, the clinic has evolved and grown to the PIP community clinic, with core partners Clarence Jones, executive director at HueMan Partnership; the MN Oral Health Coalition; Black Nurses Rock; Lutheran Social Services (LSS); Community Bridge; and Metro State. The partners bring nursing expertise, trusted community relationships, marketing and outreach, clinic supplies and free community lunch—demonstrating that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Adding to the strength of the collaborative, Dr. Eardley also received a Community Engaged Scholarship Grant in 2019 through Metro’s Institute for Community Engagement and Scholarship. The grant funding was used to purchase clinic supplies like gloves, alcohol swipes, stethoscopes, and more. While the pandemic delayed the opening, the unplanned pause provided additional time for planning and meeting with partners.
Despite the 2-year delay, the expanded clinic was launched in fall 2022 and is now run by students enrolled in the course NURS 459: Population Based Care. These nursing students manage all the health stations, free of charge, for the community’s use every Thursday from 11 a.m.–2 p.m. To determine which services the PIP clinic would provide, Dr. Eardley and the community partners began an investigation process with community input to see which services would be the most beneficial. These services will change and evolve over time but currently the stations include a blood pressure check, oral examinations, hand messages, an online self-help assessment, and a community resource table, all led by nursing students and supervised by Dr. Eardley.
For the students in this class, it is not their first experience working in a healthcare setting, but it is the first time that they are working within a community clinic where there is an emphasis on engaging with and understanding everyone who walks through the PIP clinic doors. Nursing student Decca Issa shares that the experience has been impactful, “We are doing the first steps in preventing people from getting things like high blood pressure and gum disease by providing them with early detection.” Nursing student Alexandra Her says that “it's really great what we're doing out here—preventing diseases and helping to educate.”
Though this new environment can be different from what nursing students are primarily used to, it offers them a window into what their future patients will be, “In terms of where they work, live, play, and pray. This way, in their future practice when they only have a few moments to work with individuals who may be presenting hunger pains, who look disheveled, who have bruises on their face, who don’t have good shoes, etc.; those are the social determinants of health that students need to be able to identify in an acute care or clinic setting so that they can link their patients to the right resources”, Dr. Eardley says. And the work that they are doing is paying off, as nursing student Devin Schack says this experience has helped him “see more of other people’s perspectives, getting practice, building rapport with community members and being able to better understand what this community is about.”
The PIP clinic also serves as a place to create a community. Every Thursday the clinic holds a community lunch where nursing students and community members share a meal. The shared meal is a space where connections can be made, beyond the health care checklist, and a way to address the mistrust many have with healthcare systems, especially in marginalized communities such as the Phillips West neighborhood. Building a sense of trust can be hard for people in the community and for that reason Dr. Eardley puts an emphasis on connection, simply talking to one another and understanding where a person comes from. As Dr. Eardley says “Community is my client” which is why building trust is first and foremost.
Eardley and her students are proud of the work they do, and they are pleased with the higher than anticipated number of people accessing the clinic. Looking ahead, Dr. Eardley shares that their goals are to reach all the Phillips West neighborhood and expand more clinic services through interprofessional collaborations. One such collaboration is focused on polypharmacy where Dr. Manisha Shah, a professor in Metro State’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences, along with her Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students, will talk to older residents about their medication, review medication lists, and offer recommendations from Dr. Shah herself. This type of initiative demonstrates how partnerships within and beyond Metro State University can better address the wide range of community health issues the clinic seeks to address. The PIP clinic is an exemplar of a mutually beneficial partnership- providing people preventative health while also giving nursing students the opportunity build professional skills and engage with individuals on a deeper, interpersonal level.
Though this is the first semester that the clinic has gone live since the pandemic, Dr. Eardley already considers the future of the clinic with confidence in its sustainability sharing: “we will have the supplies that we need to continue this clinic, indefinitely, as long as there is a need.”