Nursing a forgotten population
Managed crisis
Prayers and tears help
NURSING A FORGOTTEN POPULATION
by John Bach
In the waiting area of the Health Resource Center, patients sit, talking politics and drinking complimentary coffee as "Raiders of the Lost Ark" plays on the television.
One might mistake the scene for a suburban doctor's office. Then again, probably not. The smell alone -- a pungent mix of alcohol and body odor -- is a clear-enough reminder that this Over-the-Rhine clinic is far removed from the world of health-care maintenance.
A more apt summation of the HRC's approach to health care is crisis management.
The free clinic, squeezed into the first floor of the Freestore Foodbank, is a novel idea for Cincinnati's urban poor -- a place to mend, both mind and body. The HRC opened in March 1995 as the vision of Connie Ragiel, associate professor of nursing at the University of Cincinnati for 23 years.
Ragiel realized the need for a social safety net while working nights and weekends in the psychiatric emergency room at University Hospital. She took a year's leave of absence from teaching to see her project through. Today, the College of Nursing pays her full salary with the understanding that she spends 60 percent of her time running the clinic.
"We opened with the idea that we would serve people who had nowhere else to go, people who had been turned away from other agencies, people who were at the bottom of the pecking order," Ragiel explains from an upstairs office, which overlooks a littered alley. "Our philosophy is that every person has the ability to heal themselves if they only have the resources and the knowledge."
The patients who drop in at 112 East Liberty are poor, often homeless, and usually have nowhere else to turn for care. Ailments range from mental illness to diabetes to drug abuse to HIV to whatever else walks in off the street. Today, like most Tuesdays, the clinic is busy. It is the busiest day of the week, a day when clients can get an HIV test or see a doctor, a lawyer or a psychiatrist.
In the diverse crowd waiting for care, Janice Clark, 36, sits, arched over, elbows in her lap and tapping her foot. An addict for the last half of her life, she got off a bus from Tennessee to Cincinnati six months ago. It turns out that trip was the beginning of her road to recovery. For now, Clark's home is a treatment center in Price Hill, but the Health Resource Center is her haven.
"I come here to see my therapist and to get antidepressant medicine," she shares. "It helps me to deal with my abuse issues. We talk about the new changes in my life. It is just the little things. I've gained all of my weight back, and my family is starting to talk to me again."
 |
1 2 3 |
The Health Resource Center opened in March 1995 as the vision of Connie Ragiel, associate professor of nursing at the University of Cincinnati for 23 years.