Boston doctor dedicates long career to helping people living on the streets
BOSTON - A doctor in Boston has dedicated much of his long career to caring for people living on the streets.
Dr. Jim O'Connell loves his job and is passionate about the people he serves - the forgotten, the sick, the homeless.
"Complicated group of people"
"I have to pinch myself a little bit. Despite the tragedy of homelessness. I think taking care of them if you're a doctor can be surprisingly joyful," Dr. O'Connell told WBZ-TV. And for the past 40 years his purpose in life is to care for each of them individually. "There are veterans of foreign wars, there's adolescents, there's runaways. You name it, there's just a complicated group of people who happen to be in that condition of homelessness," he said.
He's the president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless. Its mission is to deliver quality care and wrap around services for people living out in the streets and shelters. He's been with organization since it began in 1985.
"The goal was to get doctors and nurses out of the hospitals and the clinics, and out into the shelters and the soup kitchens and the streets where homeless people were," he said.
The program is anchored out of Boston Medical Center and Mass General Brigham for specialty and emergency room care, but the team is always out on the streets meeting homeless people where they are day and night.
"Get to know each person"
"You have just got to get to know each person and you've got to see them as nothing other than a friend of yours, somebody you have to take care of," he said.
They partner with several shelters and soup kitchens throughout the city and have a respite program with 124 beds, as well as Pine Street's Outreach Van, bringing soup, sandwiches, and blankets to those in need.
Derek Winbush, 61, has been in and out of homelessness for the past 21 years.
"This is my home. This is my second home. This place has saved my life," Winbush told WBZ-TV. Now he's an advocate for the program and sits on the program's board of directors. He says Jim has been by his side through it all.
Dr. Jim O'Connell is "angelic"
"Jim is angelic. First starting out Jim was washing people's feet. And we know who else did that type of work. Jesus did that type of work. He meets people where they are at," he said.
O'Connell is an internal medicine doctor and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. But what he enjoys most of all is being part of homeless peoples' lives. He follows them over the years because he knows change does not happen overnight.
"To take care of this population you have to really hear their stories, listen to their stories," O'Connell said. "There's nothing like taking care of someone who I've been walking with through lightness and darkness for years and then when they have some suffering that I can help, there is no greater joy in doing that. It's a privilege to be here."