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Bedside
blogger
August 21, 2013 --
My newest hero is Pennsylvania oncology nurse and New York Times
blogger
Theresa Brown, RN, PhD. Her blog is named
Bedside
and is in the Opinionator section of the NYT. In it she wisely
opines:
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Nurse staffing ratios are clearly correlated with outcomes.
"...people died... because they were in hospitals with
overworked nurses."
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Mutual respect among the members of medical care teams is
essential for the safety of patients. "...the silencing of
nurses inevitably creates more opportunities for error."
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Like Dr. Atul Gawande, she decries -- in the final stages of terminal illness --
aggressive care that reduces the quality of life in the small
amount of time that remains. "We need our caregivers to talk to
us, ...to understand the treatment trade-offs ...about quality
of life over quantity."
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Regardless of where you stand on the importance of
Constitutional rights, do not overlook the very real suffering
of patients -- victims, and their families -- due to gun
violence. "The talk we hear from the gun lobby is about freedom
and rights, not life and death... So I have a request for
proponents of unlimited access to guns. Spend some time in a
trauma center and see the victims of gun violence -- the lucky
survivors -- as they come in bloody and terrified. Understand
that our country's blind embrace of gun rights made this violent
tableau possible, and that it's playing out each day in
hospitals and morgues all over the country."
When you see these things with your own eyes, theory and ideology
fall away and humanity emerges. The best nurses practice a profound
humanity, and Theresa Brown demonstrates this superbly.
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