‘It haunted me’: Why young doctor fought to bring healthcare to the homeless
Doctors from Sydney’s biggest hospitals are giving up their nights to bring free medical care to the homeless. We reveal the impact they are having on the lives of our most vulnerable people.
NSW
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Every Tuesday night, Dr Daniel Nour and his team of volunteers head out into the dark Sydney streets to quietly save some lives.
In a white Mercedes van, a resident doctor, a GP, a neurologist and more medical volunteers set up the Street Side Medics surgery under the train overpass in Woolloomooloo, and start chatting to the local homeless.
“It’s life altering, every week here lives are changed. It sounds dramatic but it’s true,” volunteer co-ordinator Melanie Lindenberg said.
Despite the rain and chilly temperature, a dapper looking man with a walker makes his way up to the van. He’s here for a check up and is well known by the volunteers.
“Kevin (not his real name) brings us artwork he has done during the week, he isn’t well and we are managing that behind the scenes but it’s more about having a conversation,” Ms Lindenberg said.
Wound care, heart disease, diabetes, lung conditions, and even cancer are just some of the conditions the team of volunteers treat in the vans.
The doctors and nurses provide vaccinations, do on-the-spot blood tests, provide basic medications and perform ultrasound procedures, but drug and alcohol issues and mental health issues are the most common presentations.
Many of the men who have come to access the service are obviously using drugs, one slumps over in his chair so violently his cigarette poking out of his mouth touches the floor.
A young man in a tattered white T-shirt and jeans — no jacket despite the cold — cautiously checked out the van and is quickly engaged by neurologist Miriam Wronski, who convinces him to wait to see the GP.
He tells me he just moved from Tasmania and is living in a local hostel, but has struggled to find work.
He shares more of his story with Dr Wronski — after a falling out with family he became homeless and now still in his early 20s is again on the brink of homelessness in Sydney.
“That was terrible for him, he couldn’t afford housing in Hobart so he came here. I think he’s pretty realistic about things, I can’t imagine having no fixed address at 21 but still managing to be positive about things,” Dr Wronski said.
Street Side Medics founder and young Australian of the year Dr Daniel Nour said the key to the initiative’s success is engaging with vulnerable people where they are, not pressuring them to attend hospitals or clinics.
“Lots of people refuse help but no one refuses kindness and what we show to them is we don’t need to provide just medical care, we can have a conversation and a friendly face and that makes a world of difference,” Dr Nour said.
He was inspired to establish the roving clinics after witnessing a homeless man have a seizure in London.
Dr Nour helped the man but when he suggested to the group of homeless men they should go to a hospital, he realised how complicated was the relationship between the homeless and traditional healthcare models.
“They laughed at that,” he said.
“They suggested that the healthcare system cared less for them than any other average person in society and they had medical conditions they were self-managing, because they would rather that than go to a service that potentially didn’t trust them, or where they felt they would be judged or not taken seriously.
“That haunted me for a long time, because I grew up admiring the healthcare system.”
Now back in Australia, Dr Nour and other doctors and nurses use a model he calls “opportunistic care” to bring healthcare to homeless and vulnerable people from small red and white vans.
“For the person experiencing homelessness or rough sleeping, on any given night they are thinking ‘What food am I getting? Where am I sleeping?’. They aren’t necessarily thinking about healthcare,” he said.
“We take our van to existing food services and bring our service free of charge. We have a doctor with a range of equipment and services in the van, and when they come in they see a difference in their healthcare and that’s what keeps them coming back.
“Eighty per cent of the people that come into our vans were not coming to our van, they were coming to get some food, but they had a health concern. And they took up the opportunity to see a doctor because they could.”
And it’s not just the homeless who are being helped.
Dr Nour sent a fully equipped van to Lismore during the floods to help GPs who had lost their surgeries keep looking after the community.
“They would use the local GPs to continue to provide care to the community they’ve looked after for 10, 15 even 30 years. Essentially what we provided them was that continuity of care which we know is so important,” he said.
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