Brittney L. Jackson

Jackson Sun

One year ago, Madison Baptist Church made the decision to open a free health clinic for the community.

Several nurses and a nurse practitioner from the church have made trips to Brazil to do health care clinics.

“My first thoughts were ‘why are we not doing that here in Jackson?’” Madison Baptist Church pastor Greg Gilbreath said. “We travel 18 hours by plane to do something that we could do right here; folks around here need it, too.”

The clinic has been slow growing, but a new patient has come in almost every month.

How does it work?

The free health clinic is intended to help those who do not have insurance. It is open from 9 a.m. to noon every third Saturday of the month.

“With the health care situation and insurance craziness in this country, a free health care clinic seems like a good way to minister to people,” Gilbreath said.

When members of the church were talking about opening the clinic, Gilbreath received a flyer in the mail about a class in Nashville on how to start up a health care clinic.

He gave it to a member, who is a nurse practitioner, and told her that if she would be interested in going, the church would fund it.

“She and her husband went to Nashville and sat through that thing and they came back saying ‘we can do this, and we should do this’ and the church just kind of rallied around the idea,” Gilbreath said.

There are two nurse practitioners who take turns seeing patients. If one can’t be there, the other one fills in. They also have a doctor who backs them up if they run into something they can’t handle — which hasn’t happened so far.

In addition to the nurse practitioners, there are five nurses and a pharmacist who volunteer. Though the clinic is not a pharmacy, they are a doctor dispensing location.

“We are not a pharmacy,” Gilbreath said. “We are a doctor dispensing location, so our nurse practitioner has to dispense the medications.”

The pharmacist fills the prescriptions and consults with the patients.

Looking ahead

Right now, the clinic sees about four patients a month.

“We’re kind of hoping that we will start seeing 10-15 patients on a Saturday morning — then we’re going to start doing it twice a month,” Gilbreath said.

Once they make it to twice a month for the health clinic, they hope to recruit a dentist and an optometrist in the off days of the health clinic. This way the clinic could be open four times a month.

“We’d love to see that happen,” he said.

When they first envisioned the health care clinic, they envisioned a house that would be open once a week.

It was almost a year before Gilbreath saw spiritual results — two people recently asked Jesus to be their Lord and Savior at the clinic.

New patients go through a gospel presentation and volunteers pray with every patient before they are seen.

“This is a way to give people what they might need for their body, but more importantly, for their soul,” clinic volunteer Linda Collins said.

Every patient gets the opportunity to hear the gospel one-on-one, and they pray to one day see people lined up out the door to get it, Collins said.

“God gave us this opportunity, and it is very gratifying to watch it grow,” she added.

Reach Brittney Jackson at bljackson@gannett.com or 731-425-9643.