nurses
Protecting Immigrant Patients
It was hardly two weeks after the election when a doctor in our clinic received a letter from one of her patients, an undocumented immigrant. The patient had diabetes and suffered from rotator cuff tendinitis, which makes reaching backward quite painful. “Is there any possibility you can write a letter,” she asked, “stating that if they handcuff me, can they please handcuff me with my hands in front of me?” As a physician, it was hard to read this without feeling sickened…. More
Being a Nurse and a Patient
Join Danielle Ofri for a fascinating interview with Theresa Brown, RN, about her new book, “Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient.” Brown has been an oncology nurse and a hospice nurse, as well as an op-ed writer for the New York Times and author of two best-sellers: “The Shift” and “Critical Care. More
Florence Nightingale in the Age of Covid-19
May of 2020 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. That her bicentennial fell during a worldwide pandemic is both illuminating and ironic. Nightingale’s experience as a nurse during the Crimean War led her to three insights that came to define her professional life, insights as revolutionary as they were unpopular. More
Coronavirus: Why Doctors and Nurses Are Anxious and Angry
The story of the coronavirus is still being written. The stories of polio, Ebola, H.I.V. and measles — all, alas, still in progress — remind us that public health is an ongoing, never-let-’em-up-from-the-mat effort. Narrow vision, data ignorance, image-conscious decision-making and truncated memory are the very elements of contagion. No amount of Purell can sanitize that. More
The Daily Exploitation of Medical Staff
Corporate medicine has milked just about all the “efficiency†it can out of the system. With mergers and streamlining, it has pushed the productivity numbers about as far as they can go. But one resource that seems endless — and free — is the professional ethic of medical staff members. More
The Provider Will See You Now
When did doctors become “providers� The term has a deliberate sterility to it that wrings out any sense of humanity, and connotes a widgetlike framework for that which is being “provided.†More
