(CNN) Armed with care packages, clothes and clinical supplies, medical students in Detroit are learning outside the classroom. They are putting their knowledge and boots to the pavement, providing free health care to the city's homeless.

Each week, students under the supervision of a registered physician or nurse practitioner get on their bikes and look for those in need.

"One of the first experiences I had in the world of street medicine was with a young man who had gotten into an accident and broken his arm," said Ellie Small, a second-year med student at Michigan State University and president of Detroit Street Care. "He was put into a cast the day before, though nobody had seen to the road-rash that covered half of his forehead and the side of one of his legs."

Small and a group of volunteers went to work removing the dirt, stones and debris from the grateful patient's wounds.

It's a job that Small describes as making "invisible people visible."

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