Taking Care From The Clinic To The Community
Photo/Courtesy
Dr. Beverly Nazarian.
Picture a typical pediatrician and you might imagine an expert dispensing medicine based on medical best practices and then moving on to the next patient in a crowded waiting room.
Beverly Nazarian is working to change — or at least expand — that image.
As a primary care pediatrician with UMass Memorial Healthcare in Worcester, Nazarian works with many children with special health care needs. She also works with their parents, teachers and medical specialists, helps all those parties find the resources they need to best support the children and helps create the social networks that are crucial for overwhelmed families.
And, in her work with advocacy groups and with her own medical students and residents, she tries to pass that approach on to other doctors.
Change In Focus
Nazarian has been at UMass for 11 years. When she first started out, she said, she planned to focus her practice on underserved populations, not necessarily children with special health issues. But, working in a community with many high-quality medical facilities nearby, she soon found she had many patients with various special needs.
Early on, one of her patients was a child who used a wheelchair, whose family lived on the third floor of a triple-decker. The mother was regularly carrying the child up two flights of stairs, while pregnant. Even though it didn’t exactly fit her medical training, Nazarian began helping the family find support in the community.
“It was one of those where it occurred to me, this family needs help,” she said. “I think it does become our job.”
Soon, Nazarian began getting calls from other families hoping to switch to her care because of her reputation for supporting kids with special health needs.
But Nazarian says what she does shouldn’t be unusual. She works closely with the Massachusetts Consortium for Children with Special Health Care Needs, focusing on helping pediatricians coordinate care and other services in a comprehensive, family-centered way.
Nazarian worked with the consortium on a plan to help residents at teaching hospitals learn about that approach to working with children with special medical needs. She said most doctors in training are exposed to such children only when they’re in the hospital because of acute situations.
The plan calls for medical residents to work with children with special needs on a regular basis, perhaps doing home visits and helping coordinate care with their schools.
Nazarian also practices the “working with schools” part of what she preaches, acting as a consultant to the Worcester Public Schools. Donna Hoey, coordinator for school nursing services for the school district, said Nazarian regularly alerts her when a student with a high level of special needs will be arriving at one of the schools and helps the school nurses and administrators figure out how to best support the child.
Human Touch
Of course, it takes commitment to work intensively with families while also teaching and doing advocacy and research work, but Dr. David Keller, another physician with the UMass system who nominated Nazarian for the Health Care Heroes award, said she has plenty of that.
“It is not unusual to find her visiting her patients when I am on call, returning a phone call late in the evening or even making a house call to check on a child that the family has difficulty bringing into the clinic,” Keller wrote in his nomination.
As impressive as Nazarian’s work is, she said she often finds herself in awe of the families she works with. A key to her approach, she said, is seeing parents not just as recipients of services but as partners.
Ultimately, Nazarian said, one of her most gratifying experiences has been getting to know whole extended families over the past decade.
“I can definitely say there are families where you just develop a very strong relationship,” she said. “You really get to know the families so well.”
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments