Primary Care
Primary Care is the medical care you get in the office from your doctor, nurse practitioner or physician assistant, or from your behavioral health clinician (therapist, psychiatrist or clinical nurse specialist) when you first come for a check up or for a problem.
Primary care clinicians are generalists who treat all kinds of problems.
Primary care clinicians may recommend additional evaluation or more complex treatment and refer you to a specialist (for “secondary care” though this term is not used as often as “primary care”.)
In certain situations hospitalization is necessary. Hospital care is referred to as “tertiary care” and the term “tertiary care center” is frequently used to describe large teaching hospitals.
For your on-going care in the office, we recommend that you have one regular clinician whom you see for your medical needs. If you also have a need for counseling services you may have two primary clinicians, one for medical problems and one for behavioral health.
Please look at the Staff section of the website to read the brief biographies of our staff. Feel free to select the clinician you would like to see. If you have no specific preference we will assign you a primary care clinician when you call for your first appointment.
Please ask for your primary care clinician for all subsequent visits. If he or she is not available we also assign a “partner” or secondary PCP (primary care provider) who works in the same area of the health center. This way you are most likely to see someone who knows your history when you come for appointments.
Should you wish to change your primary care clinician, we are happy to do so though we will ask you to fill in a questionnaire so that we may understand the need for change.
Health History
Completing a health history is essential to a good primary care relationship.
You will be asked to complete your health history annually.
Your history includes questions about your ongoing medical conditions, and any chronic medical problems in your family.
There are questions about substances you use included prescribed medications, over the counter medications and herbal treatments, use of legal and illegal substances. These questions are very important in assisting to diagnose and treat any problems you come in to see us for. The answers may prod your clinician to ask other questions about the use of these medications or substances to assess their effect on your health.
You are also asked about your “social history” including questions about gender identity (some people come to realize that their physical characteristics are not representative of how they see themselves; that is, they may appear masculine but identify as a woman), questions about sexual orientation (gay or straight), and sexual activity. The answers to these questions are also helpful in guiding diagnosis and treatment and assisting your clinician in giving you the proper care.
Consent
Each year you are asked to sign a consent form giving your caregivers at the health center the ability to diagnose and treat you. If you are under 18 years old, your parent or guardian will be asked to give consent.
The consent information on your health history also lets you know the ways in which the information you provide may be used to recommend treatment for you, including the participation in studies that your clinician thinks may be of benefit to you. The health center consent does not imply that you have agreed to participate but only that you may hear of such studies.
The consent also lets you know that from time to time the health center may aggregate data (pool information provided by students) to look at health trends. This aggregate data is not connected to any individual student but may allow us to understand better the types of problems or conditions we need to address in the future.
Please see our Confidentiality page to review our policies guarding the privacy of your personal clinical information.