To assist the men who God sends our way, we have seen a need for providing some medical services. Without a doubt the men who visit here have both a great resilience to the hardships of living on the streets and under the bridges and they have a susceptibility to many illnesses. We have been blessed to have two full time nurses on staff, two consistent volunteer nurses and a volunteer doctor who tends to the immediate needs of our guests. Over the years we’ve established the proper medical protocols and have had 10’s of thousands of visits in the medical offices. In December of 2011 alone we had over 1,000 visits for everything from common colds, to recent discharges from area hospitals with no where to go, to mentally ill men. We are remarkably blessed with staff to help who live compassionately with professionalism and consistency and love.
One aspect is to train the men to take care of themselves. In the long term program (CLP) we have several men usually on hand who need to be trained to manage their medication intake. They report to medical on a weekly basis and fill their week’s worth of medication. They are given their bottles of meds and taught how to read the labels and then put the daily amounts in the daily slots of the medicine containers they will carry with them. All part of making sure they are being medicated right and learning to manage their own medication intake.
(Written by Gary Mountz, Director of Men's Ministries at City Union Mission
No comments:
Post a Comment