Creative Medicine

Here is a glimpse into one of our patient rooms. As you can see the pediatric rooms are vibrant, fun, and hopefully enticing to our patients. We have different cartoon themes in each room...and no they are not all pink! What we have tried to do is make our community health center just as inviting to our kids as any other pediatric office.

However, there are some realities that we, as providers, must face. We don't have all the resources that private or larger offices have. We don't have a social worker, a nutritionist, child life specialist who could help entertain/ distract patients while getting painful lab draws, and many times we are short on nurses and medical assistants. To top it off, many of our patients don't have any insurance.

How do we deal with these limited resources? We get creative. We have to be ready to do whatever it takes to provide quality care. This could mean spending extra time with a patient reviewing their diet to help fight off obesity. It could also mean treating medical conditions that are typically referred to a specialist due to the fact that the patient can't afford the co-pay at the specialty office. Many times it means dealing with multiple complaints in one visit so the patient doesn't have to find transportation or pay another fee to be seen.

Working at a community health center has definitely pushed me to be more creative, but where else can you have this much variety in your day? :)