The Mercy Circle of Care: An Interdisciplinary, Multi-Institutional Collaboration to Promote Community Health and Professional Education

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Abstract
With increasing numbers of uninsured and underinsured individuals within our local communities, physical therapists must participate in creating solutions that improve public health. At the same time, physical therapist professional education programs are exploring methods to provide more clinical experience for students to underserved populations. The purpose of this paper is to describe an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional collaboration to provide physical therapy services to the uninsured and underinsured in Philadelphia, while offering students a unique context for experiential learning. A pro bono clinic was developed through the partnership between a local university, health system, and the city of Philadelphia. Patients are referred to the clinic primarily from city health centers. Students provide all elements of patient management with clinical mentorship from faculty and other licensed physical therapists. Implementation and expansion of the clinic occurred through the successful acquisition of local, state, and federal grant funding, which led to the creation of the Mercy Circle of Care (MCoC). More than 300 students from 4 university programs have been involved with the clinic since its inception in 2002. Faculty, students, and community volunteers have provided over 5,400 encounters to more than 800 uninsured patients. Through this experience, students report increased confidence in their clinical decisionmaking skills and demonstrate a greater sense of their roles as professionals in caring for the needs of society. With the creation of the MCoC, the program expanded to include a broader range of services and developed an infrastructure for formal program evaluation and scholarship. The MCoC program provides an example of a successful collaborative project, in which physical therapists played a key role in creating solutions for health problems faced by an urban community. In the process, physical therapist students provided clinical services and had the opportunity to explore and develop attributes associated with professionalism and autonomous practice, elements of APTA's Vision 2020.