Reflections in the December issue of the American Journal of Nursing had an essay by Mark Darby RN, ARNP: The Way of Johnson Tower. Johnson Tower, a public housing building, sounded very much like the Senior Clinic I worked in and wrote about in my book: Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner Remembers. Seems that the only difference between the residents of the buildings was that Mark’s building housed adults, mine was limited to residents over 60. Otherwise, both sets of folks who sought care from either of us nurse practitioners were mostly marginalized, underserviced, and poor—and gutsy.
Mark didn’t identify the location of his public housing building but I can surmise that it was in an unsafe part of town, on the first floor and, like my clinic, had been a converted one-bedroom apartment. He says the clinic has . . . “one exam room” and is “below the building laundry. If more than four people use the washing machine, water will drip into the centrifuge.”
Mark describes four of his patients, each with their own challenges but each reaching out to help others. Getting to know patients as intimately as Mark does is facilitated by caring for the patients on their own turf. Mark and I get to know first-hand what challenges our patients face and we know the strengths they gather up to face them.
I bet Mark’s clinic, like the Senior Clinic, promoted low tech/high touch. Here is a copy of the brochure from the Senior Clinic that a friend who had worked with me sent recently. He had been sorting through “memorabilia” from over 30 years ago!
Circa 1987
A murder due to a drug deal gone bad occurred just outside Mark’s clinic. Those who planned my Senior Clinic decided to place the clinic on the tenth floor to avoid any drug seekers trashing our clinic looking for narcotics. Neither clinic would attract patients with medical insurance who had a choice of health care facilities.
I especially liked Mark’s answer when asked how he could work in such a setting. He said, “One thing I learned in NP school is that I am a nurse first and an advanced practitioner second. Nurses are supposed to look at the whole person—mind, body, and spirit—as well as the environment. I have found that the residents of Johnson Tower teach me more about being a nurse and a human being than you would imagine.” Amen I say to that.
I’m not exactly sure when my clinic closed. When I went back to Chicago in 2007 the building was no longer a public housing building but was run by the Hispanic Housing Development Corporation. It looked well cared for. I called their office soon after that visit and was told there was no longer a clinic there.
Sad.
Nursing Stories: Memories of an Older Nurse 