This is the first in a series of posts about the work our residency program has been doing to address the COVID-19 pandemic in our community. While resident education has certainly changed dramatically in these last few months, our program has made sustained efforts to transform rather than reduce educational opportunities while providing essential care for our community.
As COVID cases continue to increase in our community, putting extraordinary pressures on our health care professionals, I’ve been reading about how well-equipped family medicine is to both deal with this crisis while it is happening and to design and implement better systems for primary care in the aftermath of this pandemic. In this post, I want to share some of the work that our residency has been doing in collaboration with community partners to manage the pandemic and provide support to our community.
Kearon and Risdon’s (2) recent commentary in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health outlines the roles family medicine has played in the pandemic in Ontario, Canada. Our family medicine residents and faculty have been fulfilling similar roles. I’ll highlight two here.
First - educate and communicate. Family physicians’ long-term relationships with their patients often engender a trust that becomes increasingly important during times when information becomes overwhelming. In addition, family physicians can use their status as trusted health care professionals in community settings. For example, on our population health rotation, residents have the opportunity to work with a local community school. Since our school district has moved to a completely virtual format, our normal ways of interacting with students and families are not available. Instead, residents are creating video PSAs that the community school coordinator distributes to students and families. Dr. Sarah Miller, one of our current third-year residents, recently created a set of videos teaching kids the best way to wash their hands and to put on and take off a mask.
Second - triage and treatment of pandemic illness in the community. The work of family physicians to provide care in the community instead of in the hospital when that is possible reduces strain on our hospital systems and keeps beds open for those in more critical condition. Our residency program is collaborating with our county’s Health and Human Services Department on the COVID 2 Home Project. Residency faculty member Dr. Danielle Fitzsimmons-Pattison coordinates the program, in which residents telephonically monitor patients who have been diagnosed with COVID and need to be followed, but can be cared for at home instead of in the hospital.
Our team has also been providing mental health services and social support, and our palliative care team has been playing a central role in supporting patients and families who are facing end-of-life decisions. I’ll talk more about that in upcoming posts.
Reference:
Kearon, J and Risdon C (2020) The Role of Primary Care in a Pandemic: Reflections During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Canada. Journal of Primary Care & Community Health 11: 1-4.