Homelessness

[Abdelrahman Ahmed]

It is imperatvie for us as residents to be aware of the adverse effects homelessness play in our patient’s health. Homelessness affects patient’s insurance status , mental health, how they store their medications, adherence to treatment plans and their access to health care centers and is linked with overall poor outcomes. From a physician point of view, we should know how this affects our patients so we can provide them with better and more relevant healthcare. However, the goal should be to eliminate this social problem and the solution lies with the powers above. Question: Should the powers above have more sessions like this too?

[Ghaith]

It is crucial for us as physicians to recognize homelessness whether acute care or ambulatory setting. It can have enormous effects on patient commodities and healthcare compliance. One of the reasons people stay in the hospital is malingering and faking new symptoms. Physician who care with passion will figure out the reason of malingering is homelessness because some patients feel too embarrassed to disclose it. Our job is not only diagnosing and treating diseases, but to care for human beings, and to be good at this, we have to be good listeners.
Having resources in hand about finding homes and shelters and coordinating it with social workers if possible might be a great idea and will enforce physician patient relationship. It can help change someone’s life forever.

[Kendall Bell]

As physicians we should recognize patients who may be homeless, and know resources available to provide our patients. The exercise we did Monday is a good start, perhaps a project would be to organize a list of resources available on WSUMED that we can easily access when we are on the wards to provide to our patients that may be homeless. Another thing is that as physicians we have an important voice in overall society. We should use our voice to advocate for affordable housing, and jobs programs, and mental health expansion so people do not become homeless to begin with.

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