Vital Times 2021 - 70

GLOBAL HEALTH
Anesthesiologists
and Community Service:
Volunteering and Practicing
Medicine at Free Health Clinics
Christian Bohringer, MD
F
or the last four years,
I have been volunteering
every Saturday at the Paul
Hom Asian (Free) Clinic in
Sacramento. This clinic is
a combined clinic with the
Hmong Lifting Underserved
Barriers (HLUB) and the VN
CARES clinics. This free
clinic specializes in serving underinsured patients
with language barriers from China, Vietnam, Laos,
Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Korea, and Latin America, as
well as local Americans without health insurance.
Patients at this clinic often have diabetes and chronic
hepatitis B, as both conditions are common in East
Asia.
The patients are often surprised that, as an
anesthesiologist, I provide primary care services
at this free clinic. This is because there is a
common misconception in our community that
anesthesiologists are narrowly trained proceduralists
that lack solid knowledge of general medicine. They
are, however, not surprised when an anesthesiologist
like me is able to successfully collect their blood
when others before me were unable to obtain a blood
sample from them!
I am frequently joined by fellow CSA member John
Liu, MD, who works as an anesthesiologist at the
Shriners Hospital for Children in Sacramento. I am
truly amazed by Dr. Liu's expertise in managing adult
primary care problems given that in his regular job he
works exclusively with children.
Anesthesiologists and other subspecialists should
not be reluctant to offer much-needed primary care
services to the underinsured, because experience
shows that we are doing an amazing job in this
role. The medical director of the Paul Hom Asian
clinic is, in fact, a vascular surgeon: Ronald Jan, MD,
from Mercy Hospital. He has provided high-quality
primary care services to Sacramento's underinsured
community free of charge for over 20 years and
mentored many other subspecialists like me to
provide excellent primary care.
70 | CSA Vital Times

Vital Times 2021

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