A great first day of family practice

Today was great! It started out a little rocky, but got much better.

This morning, I got to the clinic around 7:45 since the clinic starts at 8. I walk in, only to find out that apparently my preceptor doesn't start until 1pm on Mondays - something she neglected to tell me when we were talking before I got here. But, a very nice nurse gave me a quick tour of the clinic, and then I just went back to the apartment I'm staying in and caught up on some things for school and did some reading, which was nice! So I just had a nice, relaxing morning to myself.

The clinic is really interesting. It's federally funded, so most patients who go there don't have any insurance at all, not even Medicare. They use a sliding fee scale to determine how much each patient pays. I think it works like this: whatever percentage of the poverty line a patient's income is, that's the percentage of the cost they pay. So, if someone makes 20% of the poverty line per year, they only pay 20% of their costs. The clinic gets a subsidy from the government, but it's not enough to cover all the costs - the clinic operates in the red most years, according my preceptor. I'm no economist, but I'm not really sure how that continues to work year after year. I guess it does, though, which is good for the people that need healthcare around here. Every patient I saw today was so nice, and so appreciative of the care they were getting. Most of them might come to a doctor once a year because that's all they can afford, and most of them like coming to the clinic I'm at because my preceptor does a lot of smaller procedures right in the office, which saves the money of having to go see a specialist.

Speaking of smaller procedures, today I did 10 injections (even though I was only there for about four hours). I did eight injections in a woman's neck for chronic neck pain, one in a woman's elbow for inflammation from holding too many heavy grandbabies for too long, and one in a man's shoulder who has a rotator cuff tear but can't take off work to let it heal (at his manual labor-intensive job) so he needed a quick fix. I also saw other patients who were just in for medication adjustments, and got to see them by myself before the doctor came in. My preceptor is really great because she just lets me do things and doesn't seem to question my ability to do it, which is definitely a confidence booster. I think I'll be able to learn a lot here!