This post is about medical residents1 in Windsor, Ontario, who are rotating through a one month posting to a clinic located at a homeless shelter.
Perhaps the most significant nugget in the post is this statement by Dr. Julia Petta,
“I was expecting to see mental health and history of trauma and substance use and these kinds of things. But what kind of surprised me is that the care that we’re providing is the same as the care that I provided on my other family medicine rotation.”
And there you have it. In a homelessness crisis world, opinions about the homeless range from ‘crackpot, deadbeat druggies who love rough sleeping’ on one hand, to ‘plain folks down on their luck’ at the other. Here’s a doctor gaining experience and discovering that people who are homeless are generally much the same as the folk she is meeting when completing the family medicine part of her residency.
This is not to say that homeless people necessarily have easy access to medical care, even though such service is supposed to be free in Ontario. Access requires the magic wand to unlock the service — a provincial health card.
For one reason or another, homeless people often don’t have one. Here’s just a few of examples of how this happens:
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- they have never had access to health care in Ontario
- they have misplaced or lost their card
- their card has been stolen, or
- their card has been swept up in a tent encampment sweep and trashed by the authorities.
This new ‘in-house’ homeless shelter medical service offers assistance from young doctors who have recently completed their training. Ironically, they can also be helpless when it comes to helping their patients to obtain a new health card.
Read more on the ongoing evolution of this new Western University homeless outreach service at CTV News: New spin-off benefit: Windsor medical trainees now caring for homeless population
