Many family medicine providers enter the field with significant idealism, and over the course of their career, they get jaded and burned out. For some this happens by the end of their training. This is not the outcome we want. Historically we have been known as community leaders in social justice. Returning our focus to social justice can provide motivation and variety to keep us engaged. To get there, we will need to shift the culture of our practices. This can happen by taking accountability for our privileges, understanding the barriers our patients face, and considering how we can use our training to shift our privileges to those with less. There are tools of patient flow which we can use to improve our encounters and reduce barriers, but the tools also include those which are not just medical. The goal is not just health equity, where we focus on all patients, but health justice, where we focus on the more disadvantaged.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this session, participants should be able to:
- Identify three elements of your current practice that are causing barriers to underserved medicine.
- Brainstorm ideas for reducing those barriers.
- Identify one ideal that you had, when going into medicine, which you have not pursued as much as you have wanted. Consider what you can do to return to that ideal.
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