Mobile Doctor Makes a ‘School Call’ in Hueneme

PORT HUENEME — Ethan Bernard sat saucer-eyed on the examining table.

The Parkview Elementary School first-grader already had stepped onto the scale so a nurse could weigh him. Then he had stood straight while she measured him with a yardstick. Now a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck was walking toward him.

Ethan’s eyes grew bigger.

“So, Ethan . . . did you bring your ears with you today?” asked Dr. Chris Landon. “Both of them?”

Ethan giggled and clamped his hands over his ears. “Uh, yeah,” he said, his fear fading.

Ethan was one of 10 youngsters at Parkview Elementary who had a doctor’s appointment in the parking lot Wednesday afternoon. For the past two years, the Ventura County public health van has traveled to county elementary schools as a sort of one-stop docmobile.

Wednesday was the first time the mobile doctor’s office visited the Hueneme School District.

“Some of the children have never been to a doctor’s office before,” said Landon, head of pediatrics at Ventura County Medical Center.

After writing a prescription for steroid cream for dermatitis on Ethan’s hands and telling his grandfather that the rash would fade in a couple of weeks, Landon sent a smiling Ethan back to class.

Then came Julian, who had seen Landon earlier at a different school.

“Dr. Landon, he’s good with kids,” the sixth-grader said. “He helped me with a behavioral problem.”

Landon agreed and offered praise. “Julian is getting straight A’s now,” he said. “He had attention deficit problems.”

And so the afternoon progressed.

“You’ve won yourself a trip to the dentist,” he told one patient.

“Did you bring your brains this time?” he joked with another.

Most of Landon’s patients are referred by school nurses. Some are there for specific complaints; others undergo full physicals.

And a full physical means just that--ears, hearing, vision, eyes, nose, throat, heart, muscles, reflexes, teeth.

“We try to turn this van into a one-stop shopping center,” Landon said. “We give kindergartners a tour of the van so they’ll get used to going into a medical office.”

Different schools bring different medical complaints.

“Some schools tend to reveal more asthma problems; some schools have more behavioral problems,” Landon said. “We talk to the school nurse: Why are children absent here?”

At one school, one out of four kids has an inhaler.

Some schools have 30 or more absences a day.

In some schools, he said, there is more family violence.

Port Hueneme Councilman Murray Rosenbluth got together with Ventura County Supervisor Frank Schillo when he realized the less-well-off children in the Hueneme School District weren’t getting the medical care they needed. Together, Rosenbluth and Schillo saw to it that the public health van made its first visit to the area. The van will return to the school three times during the coming year.

“It’s about prevention,” Landon said. “Today, we know a lot about preventing asthma, but if the only doctor a child ever sees is in an emergency room, where he’s given a two-week inhaler, the causes aren’t going to be addressed. We need to prevent it, not just treat it.”