She’s A Traveling Nurse Saying It’s Impossible To Be An Ethical Healthcare Worker When The System Is Unethical Itself
On TikTok, a traveling nurse has gone viral for expressing her frustrations with the way people are being treated at healthcare facilities.
Lex (@travelingnurse) has been a nurse for four years, and she’s calling out everything that’s wrong with the American healthcare system.
She began her video by saying, “It’s virtually impossible to be [an] ethical healthcare worker in this extremely unethical healthcare system.”
She also revealed that she had worked in seven different states and that her career as a healthcare worker has opened her eyes to the state of our country more than anything else. Lex believes that our society won’t be able to improve unless for-profit healthcare is out of the picture.
Then, she shared a story that illustrates how money is considered more important than the lives of patients in America.
Recently, a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, was criticized for kicking patients out and leaving them outside. Sometimes, the patients would be dropped off in front of shelters.
One patient, in particular, was dumped out of her wheelchair and left on the ground in 36-degree weather, still in her hospital gown.
A female employee at the hospital alerted the media of the situation, claiming that she had witnessed a lot of similar situations during her time there.
Lex mentioned that this practice was not restricted to hospitals in Kentucky. She explained what could lead to the occurrence of these events.
JustLife – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
For one, the United States has a law titled the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTLA), which requires healthcare workers in emergency rooms and hospitals to stabilize patients before discharging them.
Then, she connected the patient dumping practice to the defunding of social programs for senior care, psychiatric care, and shelters.
“When you defund the safety nets that our society needs to prevent people from beginning a crisis downward spiral, they end up in the ER,” said Lex.
She added that healthcare workers are at their wits’ end, acting as the “catchall” for all the issues that ail our society.
At the video’s conclusion, she urged the American government to put funding into social services so people can get real assistance.
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