Home visit

Our patients have lives outside of our offices. Physicians need to be aware of how their recommendations and treatments ``fit'' with the rest of their patients' lives. A home visit is an excellent way to accomplish this. It is also the most powerful way of establishing and strengthening the student-patient relationship. For this assignment, you make a home visit and submit a written report about it. You should submit your written report via Blackboard.

You might make the visit with your preceptor. Alternatively, you might make the visit alone. Either way, you should try to identify a patient from your office hours whom you have seen a couple times and have established a relationship with, and then basically just invite yourself over.

Don't feel you have to wait until some medical reason arises to justify a home visit. I've never known a family to decline your request, even if the visit is entirely for your learning needs and not for their medical needs.

Students often feel some trepidation about inviting themselves to a patient's house. I can reassure you that patients are almost universally receptive, and indeed excited. Comments by previous students about their home visits are enlightening:

In your home visit write-up, include at least the following:

Home visits made for other rotations do not ``count'' for this assignment.