This week’s focus for myself was learning about our patient’s social support and living conditions. Given that majority of our population is underserved and/or dependent on SSI, sometimes we tend to overlook questions and miss out on things that are vital to our patients. I would like to discuss about a male patient in his 60s and his only medical condition was hypertension. He has been coming to clinic every 5 weeks for past few months but his BP is still not well controlled as he admits to missing some doses. ON this visit, we had a detailed discussion about existing barriers to adherence and he opened up saying that he is unable to get a job due to a past altercation with an employer and is getting eviction notices on his current residence. He was worried about losing his house and not able to focus on meds or lifestyle modifications. In this case, myself and the attending had a detailed discussion with him and were able to get him an appointment with an employment agency, we are hoping it will work out for him so that eventually his medical conditions are stabilized as well.
This was a recent example for me that how psychosocial health directly affects your medical health.
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