What is it about?
Homeless care clinics can be excellent opportunities for healthcare learners to gain skills and also foster attitudes of caring, empathy and responsibility taking. Developing these experiences requires community collaboration and persistence. Also one must create a framework for the experience to insure the safety of participants, recipients of care and also the sanctity of the experience. Developing community partners is also key for success.
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Why is it important?
Training in communication skills, ownership and empathy are difficult because learners can refer to these as the "easy" skills, or soft science. Embedding the experience in the rich tapestry of homeless care, brings import to the skills and also frames the complex nature of communications and human relationship within the doctor-patient relationship.
Perspectives
Physician burnout is prevalent, in a climate of increasing demands, flat economic return and a shrinking primary care workforce. Not only is the care of homeless persons a good environment for framing important lessons about the doctor-patient relationship, it also is gratifying. Paired with reflection, this can be helpful in preventing the burnout associated with assembly line, volume based demands.
Leanne Chrisman Khawam
Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine (OUHCOM)
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Teaching health-care trainees empathy and homelessness IQ through service learning, reflective practice, and altruistic attribution, The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, May 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0091217417730288.
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