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Posts Tagged ‘hospitals’

Hospitals and Bigotry – Institutional Racism, alive and well!

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020

Every place you live, work, visit is imbued with racism and other forms of bigotry. They are entrenched and have not gone away in spite of the many lives which have been sacrificed to change things.

We stayed away from the medical/health industry for years, but were recently forced to get involved.

What I saw as a child in the deep south is being re-enacted in the Greater Boston area. Racism is alive and well and functioning throughout the health care system. The difference? No one comments or analyzes or tries to change things – from what we could tell.

We recently interacted with two hospitals – Beth Israel and Massachusetts General. The experiences were so different I thought I was in different countries. One was horrific and one was unbelievably good.

Our first interaction was with Beth Israel and we barely survived.

We entered Beth Israel through the Emergency Department. That was a horrifying experience. We were directed by the Primary Care Physician to the wrong Beth Israel. We were directed to a suburb of Boston It did not have what was needed to deal with the problem we presented. It was quite some time – with a serious problem – that we stayed in the waiting room and at first had to endure ugly treatment until one of us complained and then everybody started smiling at us. We were then moved by ambulance to the Beth Israel in the downtown Boston area.

When we arrived we were brought to the examining area. A room with a curtain across the front and lots of equipment. That was time spent for a couple days seeing nobody – waiting for something which didn’t happen – watching what was happening outside this examining room.

There were people stacked all around the hallways in hospital beds which apparently brought them to the hospital. Along every wall – every turn of the corridor, people sick enough to have come to the hospital were all over the place – not in private rooms, not in examining rooms, not in any space which could even remotely be called a room, but in the hallways almost stacked one on top of another.

One of us started walking around the hallways and stopped periodically to try to deal with the shock to our system. At one stop in the middle of the hallway a nurse was vicious accusing us of violating the patients confidentiality by having stopped to catch our breath. My face must have shown the shock I was in, but she was just ripping me apart for this violation of her patients confidentiality. How was that done? When I stopped, in the middle of the hallway, she was in the process of talking to a patient asking questions about that patients health and background. I wasn’t aware of any of that I was just looking around at the horribleness of what was in front of me. I wasn’t even aware of the patient – who was in the hallway, on a hospital bed – apparently rolled there from an ambulance and left barely covered with all kinds of people all around.

I stuttered to the nurse that I wasn’t violating any patients confidentiality I was simply walking down the hall trying to cope with the shock I was feeling. The nurse continued to just rip me apart and demanded that I leave the area. Since we were in the examining room just on the other side of the hallway to the patient who was against what wasn’t even a wall, but a desk. Someone was working at the desk, not family nor medical person involved with this, and was clearly closer to the patient whose rights I supposedly violated and was being ignored by the nurse as someone also possibly violating this patients right to privacy. I don’t know where the nurse expected me to go.

That was just the tip of the iceberg. I was also in shock and reacting to the fact that there was a “bull pen” in the middle of this very large room filled with rows of desks and people working, talking, relaxing, joking in this “bull pen”. What I was shocked about was not all of the above, but by the fact that everyone in that bull pen – the professionals in that part of the hospital, were white. Not black, not brown, not colored, not asian, not any of those things – traditional white northern european types working and communicating back and forth about the patient and hospital business. They were, from what we saw, the closest to the top of the pyramid in that hospital.

As I took in that scene I looked around this very large room and blacks – mostly black women were seated around the periphery of this group, working. They looked as though they were the receptionist for the group, but they were not doing receptionists work.

And other minorities? Blacks occasionally came to the floor working, but they always carried a pail, mop, broom, etc. because they came to clean the examining rooms when a patient left and before another patient arrived.

What was striking was that most of those blacks had Caribbean accents and clearly came from another country.

TO BE CONTINUED

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Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale!*

*This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

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This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc. which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

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into a major media outlet bringing to the public news, recipes, thoughts, reviews of businesses, etc. from the perspective of those who belong to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community.  This is not a tax deductible contribution. You can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check payable to “Bettina Network, inc.”

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If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation will be used to support the many activities in which we engage to try to make this a better world. 

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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net 




Health Industry the new Oil Industry Scam

Friday, November 22nd, 2019

We have just been through the scariest time of life. An unexpected health emergency requiring hospitalization.

We have stayed away from medicine, hospitals, doctors for our adult lives and now clearly we know, without a doubt, that was a good/great decision.

What we encountered was a money pit which makes the oil barons of old look like good samaritans on the edge of poverty. The kind of money and resources being drawn from the society by the health industry with little to no results is endless and will become even more so. So, until something changes, we are not for “Medicare for All”. That will give full and total control over the universe to those in the health industry, but only to those at the top. The rest will be scrambling, working unbelievably hard for almost nothing and the maintenance of the racist, sexist system in which we were raised has a stronghold for generations. Civil Rights activists in other areas are simply a distraction giving the real continuation of White Supremacy a chance to develop to its full strength such as has never happened before.

The first thing we encountered was the entitlement and arrogance of those on the front line as you go in the door. You know clearly you are in a territory where – without some kind of uniform or connection to the health industry, you are second, third and fourth class citizens.

The second thing we encountered was the incredible racism – based on skin color – that is totally expected and has created a ghetto like none we have ever seen.

After having been escorted to an examining room, which was a small space with equipment and a sort of hospital bed with a curtain separating you from the outside you have a few hours to look around before you come to anyone’s attention. Once inside this room, where you get to wait for hours for nothing, and once settled (sort of) you look around and see you are one of the privileged. Outside this small space, lining the hallways and every available wall in the place are beds with patients waiting for treatment or for one of the rooms which you now inhabit. Every available space has a gurney with an ill patient in the hospital for emergency treatment. All just lying there out in the open, seemingly ignored with their pocket books or bags or whatever they came in with on top of them on the gurney. It is gruesome.

As you look past all of humanity waiting for emergency attention because of something which sent them immediately to the hospital you see what makes your stomach wrench. Out in the middle of the room – like the space once inhabited by stock brokers with their machines to call and follow their customers stocks – were the “medical professionals”. In that central space was a sea of white. We were there for several changes of shifts and at no time did the skin color in that middle group change.

Every once in a while a wheel chair passed with a patient being wheeled someplace. There the color changed because the person pushing the wheel chair’s skin color was very dark. Other times the sea of white was lifted as a gurney with a patient was pushed past the curtain and you saw the person doing the pushing of the gurney’s skin color was very dark.

When those small spaces became vacant, which held a patient, who was now moved on someplace else, then you also saw the skin color change in the room because the person now in that, space cleaning it, had a very dark skin color.

And so it goes – the institutionalization of bigotry in all of our corporations is alive and well and moving into the next generation without comment. We have searched the news for several years and found no push back against this extreme bigotry.

Ed. Note. This is the beginning of a series of articles on what we are finding in the health industry. We feel as though we are lancing a boil which has been throbbing with pus for decades hiding out under the pretext of saving lives.__

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IT COSTS MONEY TO PRODUCE THIS BLOG. WE HOPE YOU WILL CONTRIBUTE SO WE CAN EXPAND AND CONTINUE THE RESEARCH AND WRITINGS WHICH KEEP YOU KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT MANY THINGS THAT WOULD NOT REACH YOU OTHERWISE ALONG WITH THE OPINIONS AND WORK OF THOSE WHO ARE MEMBERS OF BETTINA NETWORK’s LIFESTYLE COMMUNITY.

What follows are some of the ways you can support our work:

Learn More About How We Use Your Donation!

Project 1 – Estate Sales after the Sale!*

*This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 2 – #WellsFargoBoycott*

This contribution is to the Bettina Network Foundation, inc. which is a 501(c)3 organization and tax deductible.

Project 3 – Growing Bettina Network’s Blog

into a major media outlet bringing to the public news, recipes, thoughts, reviews of businesses, etc. from the perspective of those who belong to Bettina Network’s Lifestyle Community. 

Project 4 – Boycott the Twenty Dollar ($20) bill

You can send a check to Bettina Network, inc. P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 to support this blog! Please make your check out to “Bettina Network, inc.” since the blog income is not the foundation income.

If you prefer your gift go to the Foundation, make your check payable to Bettina Network Foundation, inc. The money we receive for the Foundation currently is going to support the Wells Fargo Boycott. 

_________________________________________________________

Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.

Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.

Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.

Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net

This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net 



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