OCOM partners with Shepherd's Hope

In 2021, Mariana Valdez went through a rough patch. She was graduating from pre-med school while COVID-19 still was prevalent and lost her mom. 

At the time, she was unsure if she would continue pursuing a career in medicine, but she decided to push through. 

That’s when she began volunteering at Shepherd’s Hope and fell in love with it. 

“Just seeing how the providers were taking extra time to really just hear the patients… is what inspired me to do medicine again,” she said. “It gave me hope, and that’s what Shepherd’s Hope is — hope for a lot of people.” 

To Valdez, being able to experience the kindness of Shepherd’s Hope and helping people regardless of their finances, immigration status or home-stability is a beautiful thing and the true meaning of medicine. 

“Now that I’m in medical school, it’s really nice going back and being able to be a volunteer (again),” she said. “It’s really a full-circle moment.” 

As a student at Orlando College of Osteopathic Medicine, Valdez is using her knowledge from school to help families through Shepherd’s Hope in a new student-led initiative. 

Shepherd’s Hope, a faith-based nonprofit in Central Florida, offers free health clinics for the uninsured and underinsured. 

Founded in 1997, the nonprofit has serviced the community for 29 years offering high-quality care for free through specialists, physicians, nurses, medical students and the general public. 

Since OCOM opened in 2024, students and faculty have been searching for opportunities to provide hands-on experience for students.

With some students like Valdez already connected to Shepherd’s Hope, the student-led initiative in which students assist in the nonprofit’s clinics and with its health programming, giving them hands-on experience while helping the community, began. 

“It’s a win-win for both Shepherd’s Hope and them,” said Susan Eklin, Shepherd’s Hope’s interim president and CEO. “It’s not only a service providing health care, but it’s providing a service to the community and helping those people that otherwise would go without.” 

Caring people caring for people

The student-led initiative to partner with Shepherd’s Hope became an idea in 2024. 

Since then, students, faculty and Shepherd’s Hope administration have been trying to make it a reality. 

Eklin said Shepherd’s Hope was open to the idea since the beginning, knowing the enthusiasm of OCOM students.

“When we can have the privilege of giving experiences to new physicians that are just starting out and new students that want to be physicians but aren’t yet, it’s fantastic,” she said. “Before all the craziness of working in a hospital, working in the medical field, before you have to worry about paperwork and insurance and quotas and metrics and everything else, they get to really be part of performing true medicine and giving care when none of that matters.” 

To Shepherd’s Hope, this partnership means giving back to the community at a larger scale.

“If we’re not here, if (students) are not here, these people would go without care,” Eklin said. “We change lives. We find diagnosis that are life-treating and we’re able to provide patients with the care they need without any cost.” 

OCOM students also are able to help the nonprofit with its new Heart-to-Heart Wellness Program, learning how to screen patients for cardiovascular issues, asking questions and providing medical supplies when needed. 

In the future, both OCOM and Shepherd’s Hope hope to continue and grow the partnership. 

“We would like to grow with OCOM and give their students a clinic where they can share what they have learned with the patients, where they can learn and where they can grow,” Eklin said. 

The partnership currently is underway to expand to Shepherd’s Hope’s West Orange location at 455 9th St., Winter Garden. 

While logistics for that still are in the works, students will continue to volunteer at Shepherd’s Hope in downtown Orlando, continuing the mutually-beneficial partnership. 

“I love the enthusiasm of students coming in and wanting to give back and make a difference,” Eklin said. “Our motto is ‘Caring people caring for people.’” 

From textbooks to real world 

Like Valdez, OCOM’s Shereen Abousaouira has volunteered at Shepherd’s Hope for a number of years.

Abousaouira began volunteering at the nonprofit in 2022 after she graduated from the University of Florida. 

“I wanted to do something that was both meaningful but also gave me clinical experience and gave me the opportunity to see patients and see how health care works in the real world, not just behind a book,” she said. “I would say it is probably the most impactful and important thing I’ve ever done in my life.” 

She said she’d go into her volunteering shifts and feel incredibly grateful to be able to not just see Shepherd’s Hope’s patients but help them and see them get the care they need.

That’s what the partnership between OCOM and Shepherd’s Hope hopes to accomplish. 

While the logistics still are in the works — figuring out volunteer shifts, going through background checks, training and finding students who are interested — some students already are getting the hands-on experience at Shepherd’s Hope’s downtown location, at 101 S. Westmoreland Drive, Orlando.

“We have a bunch of people who are interested, which is super exciting,” Valdez said.

At the first volunteer session, students already were trained and knew about different volunteer opportunities. 

There have been three volunteer opportunities, once per month since January. 

Some students volunteer as scribes, documenting patients’ encounters, histories and exam results while shadowing a doctor. 

Some students are able to shadow doctors to witness the patient-doctor interactions, learning about how to treat a patient in real time and give referrals. 

Some students also check patients in and out, while learning to use Epic Systems, which is a software designed to manage patient data and clinical workflows through a unified digital platform.

“Students are going to see patients from all over, with all different kinds of concerns, comorbidity, family history, things like that,” Valdez said. “It’s very realistic to what we will see as future physicians because it is the real world and it is real patients.” 

To them, the most important part about this initiative is experiencing different opportunities within the clinic while positively impacting Shepherd’s Hope and all its patients.