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As a fourth year medical student at OHSU, lack of continuity for inpatients has been the most frustrating element of my medical training thus far.  As a society, we tend to believe that individuals are responsible for their own lives in most situations.  However, we tend to draw a somewhat arbitrary line between individuals who are acutely ill and those who are not.  We offer very few resources to individuals who are at risk of becoming ill or are in the process of getting ill, but once one actually becomes ill they are inserted into a system that offers unlimited resources.  These resources are applied with the goal of making them less ill to the point where they can go back to operating autonomously (at which point they will likely go back to having few resources), inevitably leading to a cyclic pattern of illness.  We desperately need outpatient continuity for ill patients.

posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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