This California Nurse Is Calling Out The Real Problem With American Healthcare, And It’s Eye-Opening

Lex Hinkley is a 27-year-old nurse based mostly in San Diego, California — and their frustration with American healthcare lately made waves once they posted a passionate TikTok rant that completely sums up the whole lot that is fallacious with our system.

She begins the video by saying, “It’s nearly unimaginable to be a moral healthcare employee on this extraordinarily unethical healthcare system. The quantity of instances I’ve needed to discharge sufferers again to conditions the place I knew they weren’t going to have the ability to care for themselves, however I had no different choices, is really too laborious to even give a quantity to. If my profession as a healthcare employee has finished something to my worldview or life, it has merely radicalized me additional than anybody might imagine.”

Then, they share a very upsetting story that completely illustrates how for-profit healthcare places cash over sufferers’ lives and dignity. “I’ve seen various ranges of this occur at each single hospital I’ve labored at. I have been a nurse for 4 years. I’ve labored in seven states. It’s occurring in every single place and if you happen to assume your hospital is completely different, you are fucking fallacious. Lately, as of December, hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky, got here underneath hearth for leaving sufferers exterior on fucking sidewalks.”

“They do that in entrance of shelters. They’ll drop sufferers off in entrance of shelters similar to this, however generally they do not even take them to the shelter. They actually go away them proper exterior the hospital. This particular affected person was left on this situation in 36 diploma climate.” When the native information outlet WAVE was alerted, they staked out the hospital and noticed a number of extra sufferers being left exterior with no assets.

When a stabilized emergency room affected person who wants extra care is actually kicked to the curb like this, it is referred to as affected person dumping. This observe will not be remoted to the Kentucky hospital Lex talked about. In only a fast Google Information search, I discovered information reviews about affected person dumping in San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Colorado Springs, all inside the final yr.

Sufferers who’re uninsured, low-income, or experiencing homelessness are on the highest danger of being affected person dumped.

Subsequent, Lex connects the dots between incidents of affected person dumping and the gutting of the American social security internet. “Once you defund social packages, all of it leads to the ER. Once you defund senior care, if you defund psychiatric care, if you defund shelters, whether or not it is homeless shelters or girls’s shelters.”

“Once you defund the protection nets that our society wants to forestall individuals from starting a disaster, a downward spiral, they find yourself within the ER and easily put, ER employees and hospital employees are already at their fucking wit’s finish. We can’t act as a catch all for each single difficulty in society, and but, we’re right here we’re doing it. And on the very fucking identical time, treating individuals like literal fucking rubbish ought to by no means fucking occur.”

Lastly, Lex urges our nation to begin placing a refund into social providers. “The one method to repair conditions as unethical and disgusting as this from occurring is to fund options. We have to fund correct security nets for our society. On this nation, if you happen to lose your job, you lose your medical insurance, you probably lose all your earnings, which suggests you are not going to have the ability to pay hire. Effectively, then what occurs if you happen to get sick? Do you see what I am saying? We do not have security nets for our poor on this nation. We’ve got a greased chute, and on the very backside of that greased chute of poverty is a visit to your native emergency room as a result of the whole lot leads to the ER after which we’ve got nowhere to put individuals.”

“There are answers for these issues, however they price cash. They price cash. And we as a society have mentioned that we’re A-okay with 400 individuals having 70% of the nation’s wealth whereas our group members get handled like this.”

And that is only a pattern of what they needed to say. You may watch the complete video right here:

@travelingnurse / Through tiktok.com

And within the feedback, so many others who work in healthcare chimed in to agree. One individual wrote, “This is the reason so many people healthcare employees are leaving the sector. We simply cannot take it anymore.”

Former hospital employees additionally joined within the dialog. One wrote, “Amen. I am an RN in Texas and needed to go away the hospital setting due to this. Even in a ‘nonprofit’ hospital system. I can not do it anymore!”

One other added, “I do not assume a number of the nurses the place I work perceive that who they’re voting for is straight impacting their work like this. RN from the South.”

And others joined the convo to level out how academics additionally typically discover themselves caught on this identical bind. One commented, “I hear related from academics. They’re the catch all for youngsters, offering meals, provides, clothes, emotional assist to youngsters that go with out.”

Lex instructed BuzzFeed that individuals who do not work in healthcare typically do not see the troublesome conditions our system places individuals into. “They fail to understand the pressure that not offering correct assets for our communities places on our healthcare system. Emergency rooms are meant for simply that — emergencies. I’ve seen life saving care be delayed extra instances than I can rely as a result of we had been coping with sufferers who weren’t there for true emergency care. However we’re the one possibility they’ve. And that is not honest for anybody.”

They usually hope that anybody who was moved by their highly effective phrases will take motion to advocate for themselves by defending the poorest individuals of their communities. “None of us know what life goes to throw at us, and any of us may very well be one happenstance away from being of their footwear. Our society offers a lot cash to the elite class. If we restructured our priorities, nobody would want to sleep on the sidewalk.”