I was watching "The Help" a couple of days ago with my daughter. The movie has so many strong depictions of love and acceptance in a complex world that has a lot of barriers. There were racial, sex, age, class and socioeconomic barriers depicted throughout the movie, most of which my daughter at the age of ten just couldn't understand. At first I really didn't think about the relationship the movie could have to the field of nursing, but then it dawned on me that there are still many barriers in nursing today that do apply.
I started to think about the way Hilly and her friends treated the other characters, Celia, Skeeter, Minny, Aibileen, Mae Mobley and even Missus Walters. The harshness of their comments and their deliberate actions all while looking the poised part. This is how some new nurses are treated when they enter the profession, there is that same bitterness and the "eating of their young" that is unfortunately exhibited. That ugly way the characters treated "the help" was handed down generationally, it was ignorance then and it continues to be today.
The help, like new nurses were not empowered, they were pushed down, talked down to, treated as second class citizens, talked about and threatened.
For me one of the most emotion and important scenes of the movie occurs when Abilieen and May Mobley are alone in the nursery when May Mobley repeats back the valuable words her "real momma", Abilieen, tells her, "You is smart, you is kind, you is important".
I believe that new nurses need that same reinforcement, guidance, reassurance and love.
While there are many change agents in the story, the collaboration between Skeeter and the help, standing up together brining light to the treatment these women endured is encouraging. With so many nurses entering and leaving the workforce there is a changing tide and attitude. Now is the time to remind our peers that: "You is smart, you is kind, you is important".
Showing posts with label Nurses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nurses. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Health or Poverty? Hospital Brass, Congress, and Lobbyists Are Killing Health Care!
Time Magazine featured a gripping and informative article by Steven Brill called "Bitter Pill, Why Medical Bills are Killing Us", that every health care consumer and nurse should read, . The article was the longest in the history of Time, and in my opinion a nauseating look into how health care policy and pricing guts Americans.
Mr. Brill explains how nonprofit hospitals and for profit hospitals are price gouging patients on everything from a $7 alcohol wipe to $400 per hour nursing care (not 1:1 ratios either). His article is supported by patients' stories and their medical bills.
He delves into the way that Medicare is able to contain some of the costs of care, such as pricing for CTs which have no price regulation nor consistency hospital to hospital, charging upwards of $6,000, where Medicare has been able to negotiate a charge of $500. As for other insurance companies they have their own negotiating numbers, which are discounted from the hospitals' chargemaster. Brill explains that each hospital has a charge master which is a listing of what each item costs, and that the patients are billed and sometimes over billed for these items. The chargemaster also prices lab tests and other diagnostic tests. When Brill asks hospital higher ups about the charge master they responded as though it wasn't a concrete or important component of pricing, but again and again he provides evidence that everyday patients are charged enormous amounts of money for inexpensive items.
Medicare is the largest insurer in the U.S. and holds a good amount of leverage, but it is not absolute leverage. While cost savings have been negotiated with hospitals for tests and services, congress has banned Medicare's ability to negotiate with big pharma over drug costs and the cost for durable medical equipment.
Congress has very little reason to do the right thing for their constituents when lobbyists out number the members of congress and spend millions of dollars to get them reelected. According to Brill in 2012 the American Hospital Association spent $1,859,041 on lobbyists while other healthcare lobbyist have spent $5.36 billion since 1998. Brill points out the during the same time lobbyists for defense spent $1.53 million and the petrol industry courted Washington with $1.3 billion.
While health care reform has come to the aid of some, the fundamental broken parts of health care are still very much intact, an internal anaconda, squeezing the wellness out of health care from inside the hospitals themselves. If we are to take health care reform seriously we need to have a fair market value system. People generally don't choose to go to emergency rooms, they often have no choice, its like a hostage situation. Do you want to live, then you take what you are given and hope the ransom isn't too high, or you leave without care and possibly die.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20130304,00.html
Mr. Brill explains how nonprofit hospitals and for profit hospitals are price gouging patients on everything from a $7 alcohol wipe to $400 per hour nursing care (not 1:1 ratios either). His article is supported by patients' stories and their medical bills.
He delves into the way that Medicare is able to contain some of the costs of care, such as pricing for CTs which have no price regulation nor consistency hospital to hospital, charging upwards of $6,000, where Medicare has been able to negotiate a charge of $500. As for other insurance companies they have their own negotiating numbers, which are discounted from the hospitals' chargemaster. Brill explains that each hospital has a charge master which is a listing of what each item costs, and that the patients are billed and sometimes over billed for these items. The chargemaster also prices lab tests and other diagnostic tests. When Brill asks hospital higher ups about the charge master they responded as though it wasn't a concrete or important component of pricing, but again and again he provides evidence that everyday patients are charged enormous amounts of money for inexpensive items.
Medicare is the largest insurer in the U.S. and holds a good amount of leverage, but it is not absolute leverage. While cost savings have been negotiated with hospitals for tests and services, congress has banned Medicare's ability to negotiate with big pharma over drug costs and the cost for durable medical equipment.
Congress has very little reason to do the right thing for their constituents when lobbyists out number the members of congress and spend millions of dollars to get them reelected. According to Brill in 2012 the American Hospital Association spent $1,859,041 on lobbyists while other healthcare lobbyist have spent $5.36 billion since 1998. Brill points out the during the same time lobbyists for defense spent $1.53 million and the petrol industry courted Washington with $1.3 billion.
While health care reform has come to the aid of some, the fundamental broken parts of health care are still very much intact, an internal anaconda, squeezing the wellness out of health care from inside the hospitals themselves. If we are to take health care reform seriously we need to have a fair market value system. People generally don't choose to go to emergency rooms, they often have no choice, its like a hostage situation. Do you want to live, then you take what you are given and hope the ransom isn't too high, or you leave without care and possibly die.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20130304,00.html
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