FIU medical and nursing students get lesson on home visits


Florida International University medical and nursing students on Wednesday got an interactive lesson on how to make home visits.

United HomeCare Services (UHCS), the largest home health agency in South Florida, conducted a “Community Classroom” session at its Northwest Miami-Dade offices to show more than 80 FIU students how to evaluate patients in their homes. The students will be visiting medically underserved families in North Miami-Dade County through the Green Family NeighborhoodHELP™ program, part of the innovative Green Family Medicine and Society curriculum in the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and the nursing education curriculum of the College of Nursing & Health Sciences.

Green Family NeighborhoodHELP pairs every medical student with a household in North Miami-Dade, including areas of the cities of Miami Gardens, Opa-locka and unincorporated Miami-Dade. Medical students will visit the households regularly during the last three years of their medical education along with colleagues from social work and nursing. The student-household relationship is expected to help improve health indicators in the area, while giving students a unique first-hand learning experience.

FIU students watch United HomeCare Services staff act out a mock home visit. Photo: Ivan Santiago.

On Wednesday, UHCS home care professionals staged a mock home visit scenario where a case manager visited a woman caring for her elderly father who was  suffering from Alzheimer’s and high blood pressure. Later, the students participated in a question and answer session with panelists Dr. Pablo Calzada, a professor  at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine; UHCS Vice-President Tatiana Pita; Kristina Jacomino, UHCS field RN and trainer for UHCS home health aides; Vanessa Ruiz, UHCS Telehealth nurse; and Guadalupe Rodriguez, UHCS counseling manager.

“As medical students who will practice in South Florida, we need to be ready to meet the challenges of the growing elderly population in our community,” said second-year medical student Diana Morlote. “This experience will be part of our preparation to meet that challenge.”

The session was a pre-cursor to the official Green Family NeighborhoodHELP orientation the students will participate in on Sept. 1 on FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus. During that orientation, they will be officially assigned to a family.

“We are very excited about meeting our families,” said Hanadys Alé, a second-year medical student who will work with a family in Opa-locka. “We are being exposed to elderly care early in our education. This is really going to help us in the future.”

For a video on the health challenges in the neighborhoods the students will visit please click here.

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