Courtesy of Allan Appel/New Haven Independent
A HAVEN in the City:
How Yale Health Professions Students are Setting
an Example for America's Health Care System
It’s 6:45AM on a brisk Saturday morning. While the majority of Yale campus sleeps in, recovering from the festivities of a late Friday night, there is already a flurry of activity in a three-story grey-blue Victorian house on Grand Avenue. First-time clinical team members whisper excitedly about rumors of an incoming patient, while a preceptor advises the lab technician on preparing a PPD test. An interpreter pores through a Spanish-English dictionary as smartly-dressed social workers prep the day’s case files. The inside of the building bustles with clinicians in white lab coats and stethoscopes, but this is no hospital. In fact, both Yale-New Haven Hospital and the St. Raphael Hospital won’t be open for appointments until Monday.
Health Care – How the Clinic Provides
S
o what exactly is HAVEN? The program is a free primary health care clinic in Fair Haven, Connecticut. Staffed by teams of Yale Medicine, Public Health, Physician’s Assistant, and Nursing School students, HAVEN provides an array of medical services to uninsured patients completely free of charge every Saturday morning. The initiative is the acronym for Health Care, Advocacy, Volunteerism, Education and Neighborhood.Sara Crager, one of HAVEN’s former student directors, explains what a patient usually experiences on a visit. When the patient first enters HAVEN, whether it be via appointment or walk-in, they are greeted at the front desk, where workers provide initial service information and determine the eligibility of the patient for free care. They are then assigned a Junior Clinical Team Member (JCTM), a first year nursing student or first/second year medical school student. The JCTM takes the patient’s vital signs and chief complaint, determining whether the case at hand is an emergency. If the patient is treatable, the JCTM aids a Senior Clinical Team Member (third/fourth year medical school student or final year nursing / physician’s assistant student) in conducting a physical exam. More complicated diagnostics are conducted by a laboratory team, whose phlebotomists perform blood draws, urine analyses, rapid strep tests, BHCG (pregnancy) screens and pap smears. After these measures, the JCTM and SCTM consult with an attending nurse practitioner or physician (a professional MD or RN) to determine and deliver a treatment plan. Depending on the diagnosis, the JCTM will then direct the patient to other departments of the clinic for additional resources.
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