Healthcare Workers

The technician I was training was checking his phone ALL. NIGHT. And not in a way that was disruptive or dangerous at all. It wasn't even unprofessional imo. It dinged while we were cleaning up my 1:1 and I could see him get excitedly tense but he waited until we got our dirty gloves off to even look at it then asked if he could take a quick five minute break. Honestly he was so obviously lovesick how could I even say no.

Whole night went on like that he was polite, professional, attentive, everything he needed to be. He kept the patients as safe as he needed to. But damn if he didn't smile every time that phone dinged and run to check it the second we had downtime.

Around 1am I asked what her name was and he was SHOOK. "Is it that obvious?" Yes, honey. You don't actually have to tell me her name, and you are doing the job I'm training you for JUST. FINE. but YES, YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY SMITTEN, LOL.

Ah, young love.

The symbol of healers is NOT the Caduceus (two snakes around a staff). The Caduceus is a symbol of mercantile, both honest merchants and thieves. The true symbol of healers is the Rod of Asclepius, the single-snake you see in our community icon.

I consider this a massively important (although symbolic) statement to make in an era of privatized, for-profit medical care.

"The Caduceus is a symbol of Hermes or Mercury in Greek and Roman mythology. Caduceus symbol is identified with thieves, merchants, and messengers, and Mercury is said to be a patron of thieves and outlaws, not a desirable protector of physicians."

"The modern use of staff of Aesculapius started when The American Medical Association had the staff of Aesculapius as its symbol in 1910. The Royal Army Medical Corp, French Military Service, and other medical organizations had done the same. Even today the World Health Organization, Medical Council of India symbols have the staff of Aesculapius in them."

"In 1990, a survey was done in the US and it was found that 62% of the professional associations used the Rod of Aesculapius while 37% used the Caduceus and 76% of commercial organizations used the Caduceus."

A quick summary of the core issues:

HR 1195 Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act - violence has been on the rise in Healthcare since even before the pandemic. It's a combination of factors encompassing everything from people who are sick and confused to drug related violence and violence because people just don't like nurses telling them what to do (for instance, no eating before surgery), and many other reasons. Here's a good article on that: https://www.ajmc.com/view/violence-against-healthcare-workers-a-rising-epidemic

HR 3165 Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2021 - ratios are a commonly discussed topic in nursing because a higher ratio of nurses to patients means that we have more time to spend with each individual patient and ensure that they receive adequate attention to assess and treat them. Unfortunately nurses are constantly pressured to take on more and more patients at a time so that the hospital makes as much money as possible. Often these ratios are wildly unsafe and don't allow nurses time to check for and treat basic complications that would otherwise be no problem. That's why there's laws being proposed to limit the amount of patients each nurse can have in various settings. Here's a good article on that: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/ratios

HR 666 Anti-Racism in Public Health Act of 2021 - race is well-known to have profound and wide reaching effects on health, here's the CDC's article on that: https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/racism-disparities/index.html

Bring Awareness of the Implications of Pay Caps - recently a huge group of congressional representatives signed a letter proposing to cap the wages of travel nurses. They're trying to spin this as just being about the cut that the travel agencies are getting, but the truth is that the high rates of pay that travel nurses have been getting these past two years had the power to finally make it worthwhile to fairly pay regular staff nurses. Suppressing travel nurse wages is just a move to try and keep nurse wages low across the board. https://www.wwno.org/public-health/2022-02-09/travel-nurse-salaries-are-rising-due-to-demand-some-hospitals-say-its-price-gouging

Support All Frontline Healthcare Workers (MD, NP, RN, LPN, CNA, RT, EMT, & FireFighters) - as nurses we understand we're part of a larger Healthcare team. We're in this together and we can't do it without our fellow Healthcare workers.

Quick reminder that when they say they're going to replace American workers with foreign ones who are less familiar with US labor laws and willing to accept less pay and less safe conditions, that's called human trafficking.

Took a cute selfie for facebook and everything. Now I feel like utter shit holy fuck. That shot stimulated a very vigorous immune response. If I actually get exposed to covid at some point my body is gonna dropkick that shit.