Girls My Own Age

During one shift I held the hand of a fifteen-year-old while she received her tri-monthly birth control shot. During another shift I sat in with the doctor while she told a seventeen-year-old girl that she had genital warts. A year ago I had no concept of the struggles facing a young girl in a low-income community.

Throughout my time at Crossroad Health Center, I have begun to gain awareness of the expectations and limitations of working in a low-income community. The client population of Crossroad Health Center includes low-income individuals, uninsured individuals, those with limited English proficiency, individuals and families experiencing homelessness, and those living in public housing. Because Crossroad Health Center serves patients regardless of ability to pay, the patients that the center serves are typically without access to other healthcare settings. This has been a new environment for me.

Whether I have struggled to find a working phone number for the parent of a child in need of seeing a specialist, struggled to help a patient locate a pharmacy within walking distance of their home, or struggled to find a pediatric dentist that will accept our patient's form of Medicaid, the experience has presented countless challenges and learning opportunities.

However, the most significant and most unexpected obstacle has been interacting with female patients just years younger than myself who have come for STD testing, pregnancy testing, and birth control. Listening to girls who are nearly my peers claim the opposite gender to be a major source of affirmation in life has opened my eyes to the complexity of addressing a patient's health. I have begun to realize the limitations of weak support systems and scarce opportunities to succeed on a young girl's health in a neighborhood such as Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati. More importantly, the implementation and regulation of reasonable medicinal regimens in combination with ensuring that patients have the resources to maintain a healthy body, mind, and spirit has been made very clear to me in my time at Crossroad Health Center. I have only just begun my education and exploration of healthcare, specifically in low-income communities, but I see healthcare workers as capable of and responsible for working towards this change.

- By Caroline Hensley

The Silver Lining in a Doctor Shortage

Hello, and welcome to our blog! I thought it would be appropriate to start this blog with an entry concerning the growing shortage of primary care physicians in this country and how it might present some context for our Crossroad Volunteer Internship Program. I will finish up by highlighting several of our projects, many of which we will be posting about on this site. 

In the midst of a health care overhaul in the form of the Affordable Care Act, the United States health care system is expected to fall short of the increasing demand of primary care physicians, with a nearly 66,000 doctor deficit by 2025. 

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has issued a report detailing the intense need to remedy this situation, providing a slew of recommendations to policy makers and other stakeholders. The AAMC provides several recommendations for increasing the number of federally funded residency posts, focusing most of the increases in resident doctors in primary care specialties. The AAMC also recommends continual investment in clinical research focused in in innovative, evidence based improvements to the delivery of care.

 Our Volunteer Internship Program at Crossroad Health Center, in an underserved, urban area of Cincinnati, Ohio, aims to provide some support to our network of health care providers while giving undergraduate (pre-health) students the opportunity to experience clinical care firsthand. By keeping up on clinical and nonclinical tasks, such as tracking patient progress in following through with referrals, screening patients for signs of adverse childhood events, or assisting patients with applying for Medicaid services, we have become an integral part of Crossroad’s health care team. Volunteers such as those in our program can only provide limited services to a team of health care professionals, but what we can provide is becoming increasingly important as the doctor shortage looms overhead. As pre-health students, we also look forward to exploring the world of primary care and the problem of health care delivery as volunteers at a community health center. 

Take a look around at our blog, at our various projects, and at our mission. We are excited to make ourselves part of the solution to a shrinking workforce of primary care doctors. We will be keeping this blog up to date with all kinds of reflective information about our experiences, and we hope that you will join us in this conversation! 

Click here for a recent TV spot of our program on Cincinnati’s local CBS news station WLWT.

- By Cameron Ingram

July Report

Crossroad Volunteer Internship Program (C-VIP)

July 2013 Report

PUBLISHED 08/05/2013 FOR 06/22/2013 TO 07/31/2013

Total # of Interns	14	Total # of Providers Paired with Interns	09
Total # of Hours Worked	185	Total # of Group Meetings	01

OVERVIEW

Rotation Class α and Rotation Class β members of the Crossroad Volunteer Internship Program are continuing to develop the program, complete tasks, and contribute to the mission of Crossroad Health Center (CRHC). The interns met on July 23 to develop various aspects of the projects they are involved with. Interns are managing enrollment for the Tobacco Treatment Class that will begin at CRHC in September and hope to create a system of counseling patients while in the exam room similar to that used for the Medicaid Family Planning Application. Rotation Class α and Rotation Class β members are looking forward to working with Dr. Sara Kleinschmidt and Dr. Lauren Wang in facilitating the Tobacco Treatment Classes. Interns are beginning to map out and plan for the various phases of reporting, tracking, and counseling for ACE. Project details, executive board information, class biographies, and more are now available on the new program blog: http://crossroadhc.blogspot.com/!

REFLECTIONS

“Standardization is crucial when trying to provide a high quality of care for patients. Providers need to be able to rely on us to have the materials they need to give to patients during visits”

- Teresa

“I did a wide variety of tasks from typing up papers to putting syringes together. It was awesome to see how versatile our VIP position really is and how much we really do help   - Nicki

“I made a lot of telephone calls to patients regarding their concerns about tobacco use and hopeful cessation of it...It made me want to advocate more for tobacco cessation. It got me excited about the new program starting at Crossroads and further affirmed that Crossroad Health Center is involved in their patients' lives and wants them to have a full, healthy life”  

- Vivian

“I think we made good progress in setting deadlines and plans that can be implemented for the many projects we are working on”   - Emily

 
INBOX TASKS IMMUNIZATION RECORDS
# of Inbox Tasks Addressed 29 # of Records Printed 127
# of Inbox Tasks Completed 26
 
REFERRALS MEDICAID FAMILY PLANNING
# of Cases Addressed 157  # of Medicaid Family Planning 09
# of Patients Contacted 66 Applications Begun
# of Records Requested 27 # of Medicaid Family Planning 07
# of Referrals Closed 32 Applications Completed