Theresa, another thoughtful post from you on an issue of importance in healthcare. DEI Initiatives and their formats can certainly be debated, but the basic principles of DEI are both indisputable and fundamentally American: fairness and merit-based approaches to recruitment, hiring, and work position advancement.
Yes, Lou! I appreciate your kind words. You got the point I was trying to make--that America and Americans ideally embrace diversity, equity and inclusion for everyone. I know the reality of our country often falls short of the ideal, and slavery and genocide are the original sins of the U.S., but we can still work to embrace the values we supposedly stand for and are raised to believe in. My appeal to nurses was to say, hey, let's think expansively about what inclusion means and how nursing as a profession could benefit from greater inclusion and respect. Thanks for writing!
I really like how you add respect to the discussion of D.E.I. We humans all need to feel respected, and D.E.I. can help more people to feel respected at work, which can—among other benefits—help with job retention when there is such a shortage of nurses and primary-care doctors. Plus it’s just the right thing to do.
As something of a cheapskate, I always think of D.E.I. as a way of fighting waste. Because it is stupid to waste the talents of so many people who aren’t white men, and who could contribute so much to our world if only we kicked bigotry to the curb.
This is a great point, Mari. I just finished reading an advance copy of a book called Four Mothers, by journalist Abigail Leonard. She looks at the experience of motherhood in four countries: the U.S., Finland, Japan and Kenya. At one point she talks about the pronatalist movement, which is racist and about eugenics, but she makes the same point you do--the world does not need more children and mothers. Instead, the world needs to support the children and mothers we already have. She argues that we waste so much human potential by making motherhood so difficult, an issue you've been grappling with and writing about. So, yes, if we want more efficiency in our world, let's give every woman free pre-natal care and every child free medical care. Let's economically support the human resources we already have with health care, playgrounds, day care, and oh yeah, public schools!
On Monday, I drove 2 hours to Washington DC to attend the second celebration of the National Academy of Medicine on Wellness for Healthcare Workers. The best of the best were speaking at the very historic building THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE on Constitution Avenue. Behind this historic building is the US State Department. One of the moderators was Pamela Ciprianni past Present of ANA, past Dean of UVA, and now the outgoing President of the International Council of Nurses (ICN) whose headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland. FYI I am a dual US/Swiss citizen since birth and a known international advocate for Nurses. After listening to the top Medical Physicians I was able to ask a question. "You speak of concepts of wellness but in all the years especially since COVID NO ONE PRESENTS MODALITITES TO ASSIST THE WELLNESS, PTSD, and SUICIDE OF MEDICAL PRACTIONERS. NO GREAT RESPONSE. Yesterday, I attended vis ZOOM the American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA) town hall meeting on the current cuts that President Trump is enacting. THE TAKE AWAY IS THAT THEY HAVE TO KEEP THINKING ABOUT TAKING A POSITION ON DEI and I spoke out that WE ARE. NURSES, WE MUST SERVE EVERYONE NO MATTER OF RACE, CREED, LBGTQ, Trans population! I COULD NOT BELIEVE THE RESPONSE FROM SOME NURSES WHO ACTUALLY SUPPORT THIS POTENTIAL DEVASTATING DECISION and it comes down to the ANA, ICN breaking away from WHO all due to FEAR of LOOSING MONEY AND SUPPORT. My answer was it is a little too late because 324,000 nurses died of COVID-19 worldwide, VIOLENCE AND SUICIDE. Most of the attendees were the "OLD GIRLS" who have not touched a patient is years or are academic. I place no faith in ANA much less the Deans of the top Nursing Schools who control our US nursing PENN, VILLNOVA, VNA, UCSF, JOHN HOPKINS as they are generously funded by US government. PENN TODAY JUST HAD 170 million removed from Federal Funding.
I cared for the first AIDS patients in the San Francisco since 1982 I assist with Sex Reassignment surgery as an OR RN, and I work to protect nurses from violence and those who are seriously burned out and suffer from PTSD. I have served as a Trauma RN for two GULF WARS.... I AM ASHAMED OF OUR ANA AND THEIR HESITATION YET, IN THE END, I NEVER LOOKED TO ANA OR THE NATIONAL NURSING SPECIALTY ASSOCIATIONS- JUST LOOK AT THEIR SALARIES AND YOU WILL GET YOUR ANSWER. TO MY LAST BREATH AND DIME- I WILL CARE FOR ALL PATIENTS EVEN CRIMINALS IN PRISONS. I ASK NURSES TO DO THE SAME!
I hear what you are saying. The large nursing organizations have failed to find a way to really fight for nurses--if they had, we would have national safe staffing laws to keep patients safe and to keep nurses on the job. I also agree with you that nurses have an ethical responsibility to care for everyone. Our President and his minions are trying to make America terrible again for huge swathes of people, but if all of us fight back by saying we care and we will continue to care it has to make a difference.
Nurses have to wake up and see how the top nursing organizations are lead by their CEOs for up to 20 plus years and there salaries are over $500K a year ! The CEO of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (ACCRN-112,000 memeberd) is not even a nurse and if you disagree with them you are sanctioned and receive a letter from their attorney whose office is 5 blocks from the White House! The second largest is American Association of per operative Nurses (AORN/ 45,000 members) whose outgoing CEO controlled the organization with an iron fist and an attorney present at our National conferences! Of course J &J support both of these nursing organizations because Surgery and Critical Units bring in the most money! Our medical system is now based on private equity and huge medical centers where during COVID the CEO and CNO left their hospitals and worked from home while nurses acquired COVID and some died or are attached and killed in the ER and ICU!!
Our nurses need and deserve to be trained line the new Residents just out of Medical School and they are paid by Medicare ! Our nurses receive little to no training after nursing schools and many are leaving after two years ! I do not think the public is aware of how critically fragile our Health Care has become! Does the public know that the majority that died during Covid were in the nursing homes ?? A new veston of holocaust camps !! Not one person had disagreed with me on this last statement!!
Nurses are not nuns and we are highly trained and should not be faced to give up our health and lives when there is more money on this planet in the history of mankind to fix it …. And AI will
Not fix this! It takes human beings to be present to care, diagnose and enable wellness in our country and be present to help our dying die with dignity !
Theresa, another thoughtful post from you on an issue of importance in healthcare. DEI Initiatives and their formats can certainly be debated, but the basic principles of DEI are both indisputable and fundamentally American: fairness and merit-based approaches to recruitment, hiring, and work position advancement.
Yes, Lou! I appreciate your kind words. You got the point I was trying to make--that America and Americans ideally embrace diversity, equity and inclusion for everyone. I know the reality of our country often falls short of the ideal, and slavery and genocide are the original sins of the U.S., but we can still work to embrace the values we supposedly stand for and are raised to believe in. My appeal to nurses was to say, hey, let's think expansively about what inclusion means and how nursing as a profession could benefit from greater inclusion and respect. Thanks for writing!
I really like how you add respect to the discussion of D.E.I. We humans all need to feel respected, and D.E.I. can help more people to feel respected at work, which can—among other benefits—help with job retention when there is such a shortage of nurses and primary-care doctors. Plus it’s just the right thing to do.
As something of a cheapskate, I always think of D.E.I. as a way of fighting waste. Because it is stupid to waste the talents of so many people who aren’t white men, and who could contribute so much to our world if only we kicked bigotry to the curb.
This is a great point, Mari. I just finished reading an advance copy of a book called Four Mothers, by journalist Abigail Leonard. She looks at the experience of motherhood in four countries: the U.S., Finland, Japan and Kenya. At one point she talks about the pronatalist movement, which is racist and about eugenics, but she makes the same point you do--the world does not need more children and mothers. Instead, the world needs to support the children and mothers we already have. She argues that we waste so much human potential by making motherhood so difficult, an issue you've been grappling with and writing about. So, yes, if we want more efficiency in our world, let's give every woman free pre-natal care and every child free medical care. Let's economically support the human resources we already have with health care, playgrounds, day care, and oh yeah, public schools!
Wouldn’t that be heaven? We can dream!
On Monday, I drove 2 hours to Washington DC to attend the second celebration of the National Academy of Medicine on Wellness for Healthcare Workers. The best of the best were speaking at the very historic building THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MEDICINE on Constitution Avenue. Behind this historic building is the US State Department. One of the moderators was Pamela Ciprianni past Present of ANA, past Dean of UVA, and now the outgoing President of the International Council of Nurses (ICN) whose headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland. FYI I am a dual US/Swiss citizen since birth and a known international advocate for Nurses. After listening to the top Medical Physicians I was able to ask a question. "You speak of concepts of wellness but in all the years especially since COVID NO ONE PRESENTS MODALITITES TO ASSIST THE WELLNESS, PTSD, and SUICIDE OF MEDICAL PRACTIONERS. NO GREAT RESPONSE. Yesterday, I attended vis ZOOM the American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA) town hall meeting on the current cuts that President Trump is enacting. THE TAKE AWAY IS THAT THEY HAVE TO KEEP THINKING ABOUT TAKING A POSITION ON DEI and I spoke out that WE ARE. NURSES, WE MUST SERVE EVERYONE NO MATTER OF RACE, CREED, LBGTQ, Trans population! I COULD NOT BELIEVE THE RESPONSE FROM SOME NURSES WHO ACTUALLY SUPPORT THIS POTENTIAL DEVASTATING DECISION and it comes down to the ANA, ICN breaking away from WHO all due to FEAR of LOOSING MONEY AND SUPPORT. My answer was it is a little too late because 324,000 nurses died of COVID-19 worldwide, VIOLENCE AND SUICIDE. Most of the attendees were the "OLD GIRLS" who have not touched a patient is years or are academic. I place no faith in ANA much less the Deans of the top Nursing Schools who control our US nursing PENN, VILLNOVA, VNA, UCSF, JOHN HOPKINS as they are generously funded by US government. PENN TODAY JUST HAD 170 million removed from Federal Funding.
I cared for the first AIDS patients in the San Francisco since 1982 I assist with Sex Reassignment surgery as an OR RN, and I work to protect nurses from violence and those who are seriously burned out and suffer from PTSD. I have served as a Trauma RN for two GULF WARS.... I AM ASHAMED OF OUR ANA AND THEIR HESITATION YET, IN THE END, I NEVER LOOKED TO ANA OR THE NATIONAL NURSING SPECIALTY ASSOCIATIONS- JUST LOOK AT THEIR SALARIES AND YOU WILL GET YOUR ANSWER. TO MY LAST BREATH AND DIME- I WILL CARE FOR ALL PATIENTS EVEN CRIMINALS IN PRISONS. I ASK NURSES TO DO THE SAME!
I hear what you are saying. The large nursing organizations have failed to find a way to really fight for nurses--if they had, we would have national safe staffing laws to keep patients safe and to keep nurses on the job. I also agree with you that nurses have an ethical responsibility to care for everyone. Our President and his minions are trying to make America terrible again for huge swathes of people, but if all of us fight back by saying we care and we will continue to care it has to make a difference.
Nurses have to wake up and see how the top nursing organizations are lead by their CEOs for up to 20 plus years and there salaries are over $500K a year ! The CEO of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (ACCRN-112,000 memeberd) is not even a nurse and if you disagree with them you are sanctioned and receive a letter from their attorney whose office is 5 blocks from the White House! The second largest is American Association of per operative Nurses (AORN/ 45,000 members) whose outgoing CEO controlled the organization with an iron fist and an attorney present at our National conferences! Of course J &J support both of these nursing organizations because Surgery and Critical Units bring in the most money! Our medical system is now based on private equity and huge medical centers where during COVID the CEO and CNO left their hospitals and worked from home while nurses acquired COVID and some died or are attached and killed in the ER and ICU!!
Our nurses need and deserve to be trained line the new Residents just out of Medical School and they are paid by Medicare ! Our nurses receive little to no training after nursing schools and many are leaving after two years ! I do not think the public is aware of how critically fragile our Health Care has become! Does the public know that the majority that died during Covid were in the nursing homes ?? A new veston of holocaust camps !! Not one person had disagreed with me on this last statement!!
Nurses are not nuns and we are highly trained and should not be faced to give up our health and lives when there is more money on this planet in the history of mankind to fix it …. And AI will
Not fix this! It takes human beings to be present to care, diagnose and enable wellness in our country and be present to help our dying die with dignity !