House Calls To The Homeless: A Doctor Treats Boston's Most Isolated Patients (Terry Gross, Fresh Air)

As a doctor who provides medical care to Boston's homeless population, James O'Connell and his colleagues are used to working in unusual locations. "We are basically visiting them in their homes, which are often under bridges, down back alleyways [and] on park benches," O'Connell tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It's been an education for us over these years."

O'Connell is president of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, which provides health care services at over 65 sites, including adult and family soup kitchens, detoxification units and corrections facilities. He writes about his practice in a new memoir, Stories from the Shadows: Reflections of a Street Doctor.

O'Connell has been caring for Boston's "rough sleepers," or homeless, since 1985. He says that homeless patients suffer from the same chronic and acute illnesses as the general population — with one crucial difference. "What we see ... frequently, are regular issues that have been neglected for years and years," he says. "So we see the natural history of illness that is usually interrupted by good preventive care."

Over the years, O'Connell has seen the ravages of untreated frostbite, AIDS and diabetes, as well as the effects of profound isolation and extreme loneliness. But he has also witnessed a courage and resourcefulness in his patients.

"These are people who are nameless and faceless when they are sitting out in the street," he says. "But when you get to know them, they are stories of great courage, of struggles against unbelievable adversity. ... I think I probably would've been a broken person had I lived through what they lived through."
Interview:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/29/444214320/house-calls-to-the-homeless-a-doctor-treats-bostons-most-isolated-patients