“It takes a village,” said Dr. Kate McCaffrey.

The former president of the local medical society wasn’t talking about raising children. She was referring to the community effort to convince doctors to hang out a shingle in Humboldt County.

The first step is getting medical students here.

The second is making it a good experience.

Touro’s Director of Medical Education on the North Coast, Dr. Stephen Kamelgarn, is hoping the community steps up to the plate. The Touro medical students who began their year-long North Coast rotations on June 23 need free housing during short-term stays in Del Norte County.

“They’re responsible for $39,000 a year in tuition and finding their own housing in Humboldt,” Kamelgarn said. “It’s been problematic trying to find housing in Del Norte.”

Three Del Norte community members have signed on to help. A Rotary Club presentation may yield some more.

The bigger concern is making patients aware of the role the patient plays in the hands-on learning experience that is critical to the success of the clinical rotation.

“Please allow them to work with you,” Kamelgarn said to the people of Humboldt County. “They will not replace your personal physician, but they will be in addition to your regular doctor’s visit.”

Kamelgarn said he did his third year in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, home to Hollywood’s stars — a land where third-year medical students rank as minnows on the food chain. He claims to have been thrown out of the room by Goldie Hawn and Keith Richards’ wife when they gave birth. It was nothing personal, just the reluctance of stars to share their air and private moments with nobodies.

Balancing privacy and service is tougher for Hollywood’s elite than Humboldt’s. North Coast citizens don’t grace the cover of the National Enquirer in any kind of pose, much less during childbirth. Here’s hoping local patients will be more welcoming, even if we’re not used to medical students running around.

In two years, Touro’s med students will be osteopathic physicians. They have the same skills and training as the more familiar M.D., but Kamelgarn said they are also trained in “aspects of musculo-skeletal manipulation as an integral part of their skill set.”

I’ll bet 64-year-old Jose Lopez would have taken an unsupervised third-year medical student any day over the 76-year-old man who operated an unlicensed chiropractic clinic out of his garage in Sacramento.

Last month, Lopez sought help from Antonio Arellano to relieve pain in his extremities. As reported by Associated Press, police booked Arellano on suspicion of murder after his neck “adjustment” left Lopez unconscious and on life support.

Lopez was declared dead two days later, a high price to pay for seeking back-alley health care from a man whose only apparent training was a massage class he took in the 1940s. Silly me to think back-alley care ended with Roe v. Wade.

Police Sgt. Matt Young said Arellano had a following and business cards floating around in the neighborhood.

Give me students any day, especially when they are supervised by an M.D. or one of the osteopathic physicians licensed to practice in the North Coast as family physicians, anesthesiologists, orthopedic surgeons, pediatricians and emergency room doctors.

Kamelgarn called the willingness of patients to welcome medical students as care providers a “great service in the education of the next generation of doctors.”

Med students are easy to spot — and not simply because they’re young. Short white coats denote a medical student. The real docs wear coats to the knee.

“Med students all look like barbers,” Kamelgarn joked. “Considering surgery came from barbers, it’s appropriate.”

There won’t be a razor in sight, much less the hand, of a student.

Penny Figas, executive director of the Humboldt-Del Norte County Medical Society, said the area has easily lost nine primary care provider positions since last August. The society fielded 120 calls in April from people looking mostly for primary care physicians.

Our docs are leaving or retiring. Making a med student feel welcome sounds like a good investment, especially if it paves the way for a residency program.

At the very least, they are enthusiastic. I hate going to the doctor, so having someone in the room who is genuinely happy to see me might lift my spirits. It’s certainly better than drive-by medicine from a physician who is too tired and overworked to care about either me or the future.

And I’ll do anything to avoid waking up one day to find the best medical care I can find is in someone’s garage.

Those interested in housing medical students or donating unused Humboldt Crabs or special event tickets should contact the Touro clinical rotation line at 707-502-5114.

(Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of The Eureka Reporter or its staff.)