Team

Wanted to share an experience over the past two days at our family medicine residency clinic. Was in clinic yesterday and had one of our new doctoral interns shadowing. In total, we saw 11 patients in about a 6-hour span. The visits ranged from weight management for a 15 year old, to cognitive decline of an 88 year old, to a patient that was a victim of recent sexual assault, to a patient having suicidal ideation, to a teenager dealing with headaches for the past year and multiple ACEs, to a patient follow up for smoking cessation and recently found out her cancer had returned. Some of the visits were 20 minutes, others were close to 40. Six of the visits were handoffs and the first contact the patient had with a BHC, other visits were with patients I have seen since beginning at the clinic five years ago. At the end of the day, there were some successes to report, as well as some struggles. Some patients were seen immediately, some patients had to wait 30 minutes due to the clinic being chaotic. There were some tears, hugs, and laughter. There was a sense of feeling drained but also of being inspired due to seeing the most resilient people ever. Then, this morning, our residents approached our BH leadership and wanted to set up a pathway to have all 2 week old well-child visits paired with a BHC visit to help address postpartum depression and ACEs. Debriefing with my intern yesterday, we talked about how these are the stories of PCBH. The chaos, the variety of presenting concerns, the flexibility of our model, the goal of making primary care better. Even when days like yesterday happen and there can be a feeling of isolation and drain, it is great to have such a "team" of colleagues throughout the PCBH community.