A Capsule Glance at the Kedren-CDU Medical Residency Partnership( continued) he added.
Dr. Griffith noted that Kedren needs the presence of residents who can work within its psychiatric system, stay on, and add to the treatment of local residents. Citing the ongoing shortage of available residents, he stated,“ That’ s something that I’ m trying to look into at another level. And if we cannot get physicians who are sensitive to the needs of the African American and the Latino community, then it’ s going to be a handicap for us,” he said.
“ The challenges are many. I think there’ s a lot of ambivalence in terms of what we’ re doing. And I’ m going back to when Martin Luther King( Hospital) was closed. One of the challenges I see is that although we have residents who say they want to come to work in the minority community, they come through the system and when they become boarded, they go off and work somewhere else,” he added.
Dr. Griffith’ s goals and objectives are straightforward and indicative of why the partnership with CDU is important.“ What I’ m looking at is having minority residents and psychiatrists come into the area and help us to foster a more academic environment. But everybody’ s got to be on the same page,” he stated.
The medical residents themselves have a firsthand, frontline awareness of the challenges. According to second-year resident Dr. Jonathan Alaniz,“ We are a high-volume hospital. We see some of the most severe cases, while at the same time having some of the lowest resources for addressing those cases. So, we have to be creative in the way that we work with patients in order to get good outcomes. First-year resident Dr. Evan Bogdan concurred.“ Something that’ s challenging is the severity of the patients that we see here. The patients that we see here at Kedren are really tough cases,” he noted.
Dr. Sarah Mohtadi, another second-year resident stated,“ Although it’ s great to be part of working in a program that works for the underserved, the uninsured, it’ s also very under resourced, and so we don’ t have a lot of ability to utilize some of the things that we could do for our patients because of that.”
Dr. Bogdan cited a key element in the recognition of healthcare disparities caused by patients’ lack of access.“ A lot of them have not had consistent access to mental healthcare and medication. Consequently, their illnesses can be very acute, very severe. We see a level of severity that you might not see in other populations,” he acknowledged.
Dr. Alaniz cites research as a tool to increasing successful patient outcomes.“ I’ d like to see more emphasis on research. We have a great experience dealing with patients and in the state that they come to us in, but we don’ t have a lot of the academics to back that up currently. I could see us having a lot of improvement in the domain of medical research.”
Dr. Bogdan noted,“ It is easy to kind of get lost in the weeds or to just see these human beings as patients that need to be pumped through the system without always having a long term perspective that this is a human being with decades of a life ahead of them, and how can we best serve them, instead of maybe becoming so focused on the acute setting and how we can just get them out of the hospital now.”
Kedren Administrator Omar Merino noted,“ I always appreciate when people try to assess how the residency is going, how this partnership is going and ways that it can be improved. I think that’ s a wonderful thing. Because at the end of the day, who benefits most is the patients and the care that they get.
“ Kedren and CDU have a personal shared mission, which has to do with reducing health inequities. I think of Kedren and Drew as partners because Kedren has something very unique to teach. Even though there are many other community partners, in many ways Kedren provides a level of care to very needful people that the residents won’ t see in other places, because of who we treat. We have a lot of people who are living on the street that come in because of psychotic episodes.
“ We have a link to people transitioning from the legal system and from the jail system that are treated here. It’ s a place where residents and medical students really won’ t see these patients in other places where they go for rotations. And it’ s an opportunity to see the link that I think so many of our city politicians talk about between homelessness and mental illness. This is a place where those two things come together and come to life,” he stated.
Dr. Sandra Gonzales, Institutional Officer for Medical Education noted,“ I think to be a training center, if you reduce it to the to the smallest common denominator,
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 15