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It is high time to resume health care visits and check-ups

By Siobhan Benham and Amanda Moulton - Guest Columnists | Jul 9, 2022

In the Spring of 2020, we braced for the hurricane-like forces of COVID-19. We all stocked up on home supplies, we kept our children home from school, and many of us stayed home from work. We stayed off the roads and out of stores. We sheltered in place. With the early storm warnings, we worried. We worried about our health, our families, and how to support hospitals and providers, nurses, and first responders. We continued to stay home and out of the way, but we still worried. We worried about COVID-19, finances, and global impacts. Many of us did not have time or space to worry about routine business and we were not always able to schedule routine health check-ups.

As we are now opening our doors and looking outside to assess the devastation, we are seeing families who have mourned and businesses that have failed. In health care, we are starting to see illnesses that have been caught sooner but were discovered too late because routine health care was absent, missed, or unattainable because of the storm of COVID-19.

In adults, we have seen missed cancer diagnoses, uncontrolled diabetes, and hypertension, leading to potentially preventable complications. Many women have missed breast and cervical cancer screenings, and many individuals over 50 have missed colon cancer screening opportunities.

Children have missed developmental screenings that would ordinarily have been done at a Well Child Visit. This may have impacted their ability to receive support services within the community or school. Some children may have been vaccinated against COVID-19 but have fallen behind in other routine vaccinations.

As family nurse practitioners, we value having conversations with individuals about prevention, but also about the importance of re-scheduling missed screenings and managing new diagnoses. We want you to know that it is not too late to resume proactive management of your family’s health care. Please know that it is not too late to get back to the business of caring for yourself and your family.

Please schedule a time to meet with your Primary Care Provider to discuss your specific concerns and review routine screening recommendations. If you are concerned about exposure risk, call and ask your health care provider’s office about the precautions they are taking. Many offices continue to require masks, enforce social distancing, and use a different entrance or waiting room for potentially symptomatic patients. As we learn to live with this COVID-19 storm and its ongoing repercussions, it is time to re-establish care with your family provider and catch up on routine check-ups and screenings.

Siobhan Benham and Amanda Moulton work in Family Practice as APRNs (Advanced Practice Registered Nurses) and are members of the NH Nurse Practitioner Association. NHNPA supports the work of GoTruthNH and encourages readers to refer to their website – gotruthnh.com – as a resource. GoTruthNH is a public education and grassroots effort to promote accurate and truthful information around health and wellness to communities across the Granite State.

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