Healthcare isn’t Always about Medicine

My parents were married nearly 60 years when my mother died. Together, they had been through the end of the Great Depression and a world war. They built a good life together. Suddenly, it was gone. My mother went on a brief “girls’ trip” with friends, had a heart attack, and never came back. My father was crushed.

Loneliness is Harmful to Patient Health

Fortunately, I lived close to my parents and visited my father daily. He always had breakfast ready for us. We saw each other every day. We attended the local Lions Club as father-son members every Tuesday evening.

One of my most poignant memories, after my mother passed, is of dropping him off at home, after our Tuesday evening meeting, and watching him walk the short walk to his front door into an empty, dark house. It was as if I could see the weight of loneliness on his shoulders, making his steps heavy and his gate slow.

Never will that image leave me, ready to be recalled whenever my conversations turn to someone being alone. Loneliness, it has been quantified, can be as harmful to a person’s health as smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes. Emotionally, I know it is much more harmful. Dad lasted barely 18 months.

The Community Health Worker helps Patients handle Grief and Loneliness

Many times our pharmacy Community Health Workers (CHWs) encounter, work with, and befriend patients struggling with loneliness, grief, and anxiety. Many of them are elderly. Sometimes our CHWs are the only contact for a patient in a day.

Community health workers play a crucial role in the healthcare of lonely patients.

While we focus on the delivery of patient care, we cannot lose focus and think that care for a patient equates only to the healthcare system. Many times, patient care equates to the social support a patient has within their family and community, and how that social support fits into a patient’s greater health.

Does the patient have local family? Does that family provide support, or are they a source of concern? Does the patient have a circle of friends who care for each other and check on each other?

There are a lot of things that influence a patient’s well-being. Working through isolation and loneliness is only a part of the puzzle community pharmacy CHWs try to piece together.

The Positive Impact of a CHW with Empathy

For example, Bonnie, our superstar CHW, was making an introductory call to a 93-year-old female patient who lived alone. Not knowing what type of scenario she would encounter, Bonnie called that patient.

It took no more than a minute to exchange introductions. Bonnie immediately noted something unusual and commented to the patient, “You seem really chipper today!” To which the lady responded, “Well, today is my birthday! I’m all dressed up; I’m getting all sorts of phone calls, and my daughter is picking me up to go out.”

Having answered multiple questions with that sentence, Bonnie did the only thing left to do on a care management call. She sang “Happy Birthday” to the patient. (Bonnie has a lovely voice.) They both giggled, said they would talk later, and hung up.

Care management isn’t always about medicine. Neither is healthcare.