Some patients won't see nurses of different race

[MissouriLady]

When it comes to this case in Michigan, I think that I side with the hospital. Had they not given in to his demands, they would have been endangering an innocent newborn. That poor baby had nothing to do with his father's views, and it is the hospital's responsibility to ensure that the baby is cared for. They weren't showing their nurses compassion by cowtowing to him, but they were showing compassion for the baby. I kind of doubt that the hospital actually had a policy for this exact situation and settled to minimize the damage to their reputation.
When it comes to adults, though...if you're well enough to make demands that your nurses be switched due to your own racism or prejudice, then imho, you're well enough to choose another hospital.

 

[Nova]

You may be right about that, but I do pay a portion of my health care. I WILL, and make no mistake, deal with and pay, whomever "I" am comfortable with. And, make no mistake, if I am UNcomfortable with that healthcare provider, "I" will NOT tolerate them, to the point of exiting the hospital. It's still MY money that pays whatever portion, and "I" WILL be, and have been, in charge of that.

Unless you are declared incompetent, you have every right to leave the hospital. You don't have the right to tell the hospital what skin color its employees must have.

 

[Nova]

A BS argument is right. Customers/consumers are not bound by ANY of those laws. They have every right to shop around for the professionals that they like and they also have every right to REFUSE services/treatment from individuals at any time for any reason.

Now grant it the hospital/service provider doesn't necessarily have to provide them with another employee that meets their preference BUT the fact is the patients have the right to make that call.

As cited in my post, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals says customers ARE bound by the Constitution when it comes to staffing decisions. The customer cannot require that the staffing be changed.

As far as I know, the customer is generally free to leave.

 

[JBean]

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
sweeping generalizations about races is a form of racism and stereotyping.
Please don't do it here.

Post lands at random on the thread. offending posts were removed.

 

[Herding Cats]

There are times when being gentle is just not possible - like inserting a nasogastric tube. It hurts, no matter how gentle the hands are guiding it through your nose, past your windpipe and down into your stomach. LOL.

And the same with shots...some shots are just going to hurt no matter what.

Gentle hands are a must, and stem from a gentle mind and experience. I don't doubt TS's experience, but I have to brag on my IV insertion...had a kid who was terrified of needles who I brought through the experience of a third IV being inserted without realizing we were done. Made my day. Made his, too. He requested me to do his IV changes for the rest of his hospitalization, and I happily complied.

Racism, however it rises, is ugly. But how do we, as RNs, handle this with some decency and grace? We do what we can to make the patient comfortable, and if that means I need to switch my patients with someone else, I'll do that...if it means that a patient will take his meds, or allow dressings to be changed, or their body getting cleaned...yeah, I can handle pulling a new chart and getting up to speed.

Doesn't mean the patient is right...just means that *I* can make the accommodation. And so can lots (all) of the RNs I know...

Medicine is far more personal and intimate than buying a Big Gulp at the 7-11. Often, my hands go inside your body...and that is about as intimate as it can get. The patient needs to be comfortable with me, and I need to be professional and not take things personally. Just the way I'm built...

Anyway, enough from me...just wanted to add a different perspective to the thread.

Best-
Herding Cats

 

[JBean]

You may be right about that, but I do pay a portion of my health care. I WILL, and make no mistake, deal with and pay, whomever "I" am comfortable with. And, make no mistake, if I am UNcomfortable with that healthcare provider, "I" will NOT tolerate them, to the point of exiting the hospital. It's still MY money that pays whatever portion, and "I" WILL be, and have been, in charge of that.

IMO, that is reasonable assuming the basis is the quality of care and not quality of race.

I 100% agree that someone should leave the hospital if they are not satisfied with the care they are receiving.

 

[Nova]

Herding Cats, I don't doubt that the overwhelming majority of nurses handle such cases with the same grace and professionalism that you do. And I applaud you all!

But I still think the law is correct in spirit. If customers can use their wallets to compel employers to discriminate, then our civil rights laws have no meaning.

(IIRC, at the link I posted above, it says the 7th Circuit allowed for special cases (such as, say, a female rape victim who is terrified of male doctors or nurses) where the psychiatric needs of patients must be accommodated. But everyday, garden-variety racism is not such a case.)

 

[WholeLottaRosie]

Wow and I never thought about being able to refuse a nurse cause of anything. Hmmm.

 

[believe09]

Dad should have exercised his right to refuse the care of the staff and transported his child or had his child transported I guess. I am not a fan of enabling someone in their POV when it violates the policy of the institution involved or the rights of the employees who work for that institution.

What a happy outcome that would have been for everyone, right? Of course he would have had to do his homework to make sure that whatever facility he chose had no employees of the race that merited his disapproval-perhaps private home care would have worked better for him.

In any case, it doesnt matter because rather than transferring his child, he made a request which was honored by staff members representing the hospital. Violating the policy of the hospital, which is why the hospital was sued and why they chose to settle without question. In fact their statement was supportive of the claims made against them. imo.

 

[crystalgenie]

I sincerely hope this bigot doesn't need a heart transpant and the only doctor that can save his useless life is not white. Just for him. If he dies then the gene pool will be a little cleaner and so will the air we breathe.

 

[believe09]

I sincerely hope this bigot doesn't need a heart transpant and the only doctor that can save his useless life is not white. Just for him. If he dies then the gene pool will be a little cleaner and so will the air we breathe.

This post just reminded me of an episode of M**advertiser censored*S*H:

Dear Dad...Three.

The surgeons deal with a racist sergeant who demands transfusions of only Caucasian blood. While he is sleeping, Hawkeye and Trapper color his skin.

 

[Reader]

Funny, believe09!

This incident makes you wonder what the father would do if the family was in a bad accident and the paramedics that responded were not of his preferred race...would he turn down emergency assistance for himself and his family and wait for substitutions to be made?...could be a matter of life and death.

 

[csziggy]

Wow and I never thought about being able to refuse a nurse cause of anything. Hmmm.

After my knee replacement last May, I did have to ask a nurse to not care for me. I'm allergic to perfume and I could smell hers when she stood at the door! She was OK with that and the aide on duty was wonderfully able at everything I needed. I don't understand why a nurse would wear an overpowering perfume like that.

I had two knee replacements last year, spent a total of six days in the surgical hospital and twenty days in a rehab hospital. I had nurses and aides of all races and genders and they were all great. I know the male nurses were more embarrassed than I was with some of what they had to help me do but they were still great about it.

 

[wantjustice]

I remember watching 20/20 about heroes. There was a mother with her young daughter driving home. The mom noticed a semi in front of her that had crashed. She told her daughter to stay put and ran to the driver. He was passed out from his injuries. She was afraid that the semi cab would explode. She pulled him out and sure enough the cab caught on fire. They are now good friends. He is white and she is black. This story was so beautiful to me when I heard it but it shows we are all humans and you never know when you will need someone to help you out and who your hero might be. Racism in 2013 still shocks me!

 

[Norwegian]

When I lived in Iowa 15 years ago I got to know a doctor who told me straight out he wouldn't want to treat a black person.

So much for the doctor's oath...

 

[Sonya610]

The surgeons deal with a racist sergeant who demands transfusions of only Caucasian blood. While he is sleeping, Hawkeye and Trapper color his skin.

So there is lots of talk about the problems with "caucasians", are we to assume those attitudes only exist among whites? Or perhaps when other races display those same attitudes they are seen as admirable instead of horrible/evil?

Seems pretty obvious Drew-King Hospital was run by blacks primarily FOR blacks because they LIKED being treated by their own people. Is that wrong??? Or is that a beautiful sign of an evolved society when they prefer to be treated by people that "look like them"?

King/Drew, founded in the aftermath of the 1965 Watts riots, has stood for more than three decades as a symbol of justice and political power to many black people in South Los Angeles and beyond. In reality, if not officially, the hospital was established by and for African Americans; the majority of its staff always has been black.

"That hospital means hope to us," said Karimu McNeal, 52, an African American woman treated successfully for colon cancer at King/Drew in 2002. "When you go into the hospital and you see people that look like you and take care of you, it gives you hope for the whole race that we're achieving and doing something."

Drew King Hospital -- one of the deadliest in America: http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/05/local/la-me-kdday1dec05

 

[waitin'4thewrld2chg]

So there is lots of talk about the problems with "caucasians", are we to assume those attitudes only exist among whites? Or perhaps when other races display those same attitudes they are seen as admirable instead of horrible/evil?

Seems pretty obvious Drew-King Hospital was run by blacks primarily FOR blacks because they LIKED being treated by their own people. Is that wrong??? Or is that a beautiful sign of an evolved society when they prefer to be treated by people that "look like them"?

Can we assume this hospital is as it is because of black against white racism?

The hospital could be as it is in part because of some kind of reaction against centuries of white against black oppression. Dunno, just speculating.

Oops, so this hospital is no longer operating as such? That's what I get for pontificating and trying to get ready for work at the same time lol. I used the present tense incorrectly.

 

[i.b.nora]

Lost Hospital — Martin Luther King Jr./King Drew Medical Center, Watts, California
Posted on November 16, 2010 by Craig B. Garner

"The proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, a phrase borrowed from Greek mythology, in some ways describes the origins of Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital in Watts, California. Spurred by the 1965 Watts Riots, then-California governor Pat Brown appointed a Commission to identify the causes of the civil unrest.

One of the major findings in the 1965 McCone Report was that this low income area in South Central Los Angeles County lacked health care access (the closest public trauma center was Los Angeles County — USC Medical Center)."

From The LA Times article: "Some vividly recall how things used to be, when they had to find a ride to the main county hospital some 15 miles away. It was a long trip if you didn't have a car — and most people didn't. "Twenty-five dollars sick" meant you were in bad enough shape to pay for a cab across town.​

And...

"From the beginning, the hospital was source of pride and jobs in the community."

http://hospitalstay.com/2010/11/los...jr-king-drew-medical-center-watts-california/

Due in large part to the Pulitzer Prize winning series by The LA Times, the hospital closed in 2007. I do not know if it has reopened under different auspices.

 

[STEADFAST]

Wow and I never thought about being able to refuse a nurse cause of anything. Hmmm.

I bet if the bigoted man were the patient instead of his child and he needed some sort of assistance or adjustment in the hospital, he wouldn't have been so picky about the race of the nurse who answered his call button.

The hospital should never have given his nurse-race request the least bit of attention. Would they have honored his request if he'd asked for only "big boobed" nurses? Only beautiful nurses? Only protestant nurses? Very unlikely!

 

[believe09]

HUH? I dont recall anyone making statements regarding racism being confined to caucasians vs non caucasians. I dont see that any where on this thread. And I am not sure what the Drew-King hospital in LA has to do with a father at a Detroit hospital who demanded that no African American nurses care for his child.

Apples and oranges imo.