When Toyin Ajayi, MD, began practicing family medicine in Boston, she cared for a patient for several years. “She had a number of chronic physical health diagnoses and a long history of mental health challenges, and she was often hospitalized because she hadn’t taken her medicines,” Ajayi says. “One time, when I was following up with her after yet another hospitalization, she told me, ‘I just want you to know, I am not noncompliant and defiant.’ In healthcare we develop language that is not person-centered, and is sometimes even disparaging, and she had heard people label her that way. That was really profound for me, and it helped me formulate ideas about what it looks like to earn the trust of people we serve. It also started me down a path of trying to understand how chronic trauma shows up in people’s health needs.”
Courtesy of Cityblock Health
