Medical Clinic
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Medical Clinic The clinic is a vital part of the Society. It is usually the starting point for most people in getting the help they need to change their lives. It offers primary medical and nursing care, specialty consultation in infectious disease and ophthalmology, methadone maintenance, addictions counseling, diabetes education program, phlebotomy and limited medication dispensing. Experience has shown that providing integrated, innovative and comprehensive health care can improve patient acceptance of care and compliance with treatment. Introduction The Vancouver Native Health Society was established to address the health disparities of urban First Nations people and to improve their health status by offering comprehensive health care. The medical clinic was the first program developed by the Society and opened in 1991. In addition to First Nations people, the clinic offers services to all residents of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) community. The DTES is one of Canada's most impoverished communities. The area is rife with unemployment, poverty, substance abuse, crime and the sex trade. In this inner city environment, chemical dependency, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, syphilis, and hepatitis occur at alarming rates. The devastation experienced by individuals and the community as a result of these diseases has reached critical levels and it is well recognized that First Nations people suffer from many of these preventable diseases at rates far exceeding non-natives. Improving the health of this community requires coordinated efforts from many sources, including all levels of government, non-profit organizations, private funding, the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. The Society recognizes the importance of educating medical trainees in the fields of inner city medicine and First Nations health care. To this end, the clinic acts as a teaching site for students from UBC's Faculty of Medicine and nursing students from several Lower Mainland programs. As part of our involvement with the Faculty of Medicine's special populations teaching initiative, we developed a teaching guide that highlights many of the important issues of inner city medicine. In order to provide the medical students with a broader clinical perspective, we recruited several patients to take photographs and provide a narrative they felt captured issues they believed would help the students better understand life in the DTES. Our desire to provide input into the training of First Nations physicians has helped lead to the creation of the UBC First Nations Residency Program. Objectives:
The clinic had a total of 22,454 in 2005. Our patient caseload was 3,999, with Caucasians accounting for 47%, aboriginals 41% and the remaining 12% other ethnicities. 66% of patients were male and 34% female. Further details and statistics of the services provided by the medical clinic are available in our 2005 VNHS' annual report. |
