Peds Externship: Week 4

Week 4 was my last week in primary care pediatrics in the inner city. Truthfully, it wasn't much different than Week 3. But here it is:

Peds Externship: Week 4

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Insurance issues surfaced with a few patients this week. It's so frustrating. This one kid needed to see a dentist, bad; but it seems that no dentist in the entire city was taking their insurance. Every place on the Medicare/Medicaid list wasn't taking new patients. And the dental clinics that might've had long wait-lists. It's quite simply ridiculous that this is even an issue at all here in the US. Such is the reality. The pediatrician called in the social worker to deal with the insurance issues. When the social worker reported back to the pediatrician, he was just like, "No disrespect - I see you talking, but all I hear is blah blah blah because I don't understand anything about insurance." Also, some insurance companies change their formularies (which drugs they cover) every few months - and it's quite difficult to keep up.

Patient punctuality has been an issue this week. Every evening, the pediatrician's schedule was completely booked with patients. But one day, there was a 2-3 hour block where no patients showed up. o_O It wasn't even that they were late, they just didn't show up and didn't call to cancel. That was really frustrating, as I was bored out of my mind enough to take a nap. Next to the pediatrician. Oops.

At least I saw lots of cute kids during Week 4. There was a family of 3 that came in, and each kid kept giving me a book to read to them and such. It was quite adorable - though we were in the middle of a clinic visit, so my attention was divided. And the babies cooperated with me pretty well. I'm glad to have left the clinic with my track record intact of having made no babies cry. :-P