A community coalition dedicated to helping homeless people designed a health care intervention that has become a comprehensive and successful medical and respite care program.
No matter where your medical career takes you, you will most likely encounter patients facing barriers to accessing health care. Everyone needs to prepare to care for underserved patients.
Erwin C. Wang, MHA, Megan Prior, Jenny M. Van Kirk, Stephen A. Sarmiento, Margaret M. Burke, MS, Christine Oh, MS, Eileen S. Moore, MD, and Stephen Ray Mitchell, MD
Policies and systems are slow to resolve structural disparities in access to insurance coverage and health care, but physicians can act now.
Shannon U. Waterman, MD, Amanda Kost, MD, Rachel Lazzar, MSW, and Sharon Dobie, MD, MCP
The Underserved Pathway at the University of Washington School of Medicine helps prepare future physicians to work with underserved populations by providing a foundation of practical knowledge and real-world experiences.
Physicians have an ethical responsibility to be functionally literate in health statistics and able to explain information such as a test’s positive predictive value to their patients.
According to documented studies, patients who have good relationships with their physicians are less likely to file complaints in the event of an adverse medical outcome.
An examination of some of the factors that can weaken the therapeutic nature of the patient-physician relationship and how a physician can resolve them in the patient's best interest.