A Medical Home

Here's a picture of me and my pediatric colleague, Dr. Raji. I have the pleasure of working with her part of my week, but she shares her time working at our other site in Norfolk, VA.

I'm not sure what I expected when I started working at our community health center, as I was just so excited to be here. Some of my preconceived thoughts were that I would be alone in the middle of nowhere, without support. Don't get me wrong, there are days where you feel helpless...but you are never alone. One of the best aspects of my transition has been having Dr. Raji to show me the ropes and help me get acclimated to working here.

Aside from having support from other providers, you must put things in perspective as far as what you feasibly can do for a patient. I went into this career wanting to do underserved medicine, but what would that mean in practice? I'll share one story, which has helped keep me grounded.

A teenage boy came in with abdominal pain that had lasted months and when asked stated he was "stressed out." Now, teenagers aren't the easiest to get a history from, so I started asking questions. Are your friends stressing you out? Are you in a relationship with someone that is stressing you out? Has school been really tough on you? He just shook his head no to all of my questions. I asked him "Well, what is it then?" He looked down and mumbled "I don't have a bed, and I haven't had a bed in years." Definitely not the response I was expecting.

Granted, we dealt with his abdominal pain and were able to control that, but what about his bed? I could not fix that and that really frustrated me. I thought I was here to help people...why can't I provide basic needs? I carried this with me for days and knew that I had to change my perspective. The only thing that gave me comfort was the thought that despite my patients' unstable worlds of no beds or moving from shelter to shelter, at least they could have a place of stability for their medical care. They at least had a medical home...our community health center.