For our service learning project, the class teamed up with Together Colorado (n.d.) to be a part of their Bridges to Care (B2C) project. Together Colorado (n.d.) is a “non-partisan, multi-racial, multi-faith community organization that unlocks the power of people to transform their communities through community organizing.”(n.d., para. 1). Their B2C project is an initiative, originally developed in Camden, New Jersey, that focuses on getting people, whose main primary care provider is the emergency room, out of the emergency room and into clinics, community hospitals, and in-home visits for their primary care. These people are referred to as “hotspottters” because data analysis reveals that they live in a certain area codes in Aurora, Colorado …show more content…
One of the challenges that my partner and I faced, was difficulty reaching clients through the telephone number provided. The clients that we were assigned to us did not have a functional phone number so it made reaching them and setting up a meeting difficult. Since we could not reach our clients directly, we had to talk with the client’s Clinical Care Worker (CCW). The other challenge was reaching the CCW on the phone and figuring out a way to reach our clients. When I finally was able to talk to the CCW, I was told that one of my assigned clients was never a part of the project and I could not schedule a meeting with my client for that reason. The CCW referred me to Ms. T who could help me get a new client to replace the one who was not a part of B2C. I talked to Ms. T over the phone and she was able to assign me a different person, a man by the name of Mr. W. After reaching on the phone, my partner and I scheduled a meeting with Mr. W at his apartment. The day of the meeting, my partner and I met before the meeting to go over what to ask him about the program. We met with him for roughly 30 minutes and in that time he expressed how much the project had helped him and how “it was a blessing in disguise” (personal communication, …show more content…
communication, collaboration, and coordination), health promotion, and the cost of health care to my experience as a volunteer. In class we discussed about patient centered care. I learned “research shows that orientating healthcare around the preferences and needs of patients has the potential to improve patient’s satisfaction with care as well as their clinical outcomes” (Finkelman & Kenner, 2016, p.287). The B2C project is exclusively centered on the patient. Mr. W spoke very highly about B2C because he was able to get help and receive appropriate care he needed. He mentioned how the staff worked hard around his schedule and getting primary care from them was easier than going into a doctor’s office because they visited him at home. I learned that the B2C staff really cared for his well-being. Mr. W also talked about the team that would go into his home and give him primary care, this team consisted of many health care workers. In class we discussed interprofessional teams and the importance of their effectiveness. As stated by Finkelman and Kenner, (2016), ‘effective teams have a culture that fosters openness, collaboration, teamwork, and learning from mistakes’ (p. 310). From what Mr. W said, the B2C team was very effective based on the definition provided. However, I learned that a team can be only as effective as the patient