Dear candidates for President of the United States of America, it’s great you are going to Iraq and Columbia. Consider a brief detour to hospitals in this country where the not so fortunate members of the nation you want to preside over must go to seek care.
What a sad world we live in. I’m not talking about a world full of genocide, the starving babies of third world countries, or the prisons in Thailand. I’m talking about institutions in the United States of America meant to serve the ill and needy. I say institution(s) so you don’t assume the one cited in the rest of this story is the only one. You and I can no longer be that naive.
In Maryland if you are financially sound Shepard Pratt has a great mental health facility, “The Retreat at Shepard Pratt”, they of course are non participatory in insurance, but for 1800 dollars a day – even if you are batshit crazy – you are going to be treated like royalty. I’m certain we can find similar facilities all over the nation.
Others are not so fortunate.
A 49 year old women, Esmin Green, died in the ER of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. She was a victim of negligent homicide. You see, if you’re poor and crazy people can ignore you, even at places which are theoretically there to help you. The hospital will also feel justified in falsifying records, writing “patient awake and alert, walking to the bathroom” (paraphrase of noted falsified records), when the patient is lying on the chair or floor unconscious, perhaps already dead.
Kings County Hospital, from a three click scroll, tends to ignore people every now and again. In 1991 they did not pay enough attention “to a suicidal patient who escaped her restraints and jumped from a sixth-story window”. Last year they were sued for Inhumane Treatment. This is the pdf of the complaint filed last year against New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.
No doubt if you are ill, especially mentally ill, have no money, and no advocate in the way of family or friends, you are sunk. In this case the end result was death. I have to wonder how many more of these occur throughout this country on any given day. Deaths covered up by hospital notes, unquestioned deaths not caught on videotape.
How dare people who work in an institution meant to help and heal allow something like this to happen. How dare those who run this facility allow these conditions to persist. How dare the conditions at this facility be ignored for so long.
What baleful specimens of humanity would allow such to happen to another human being?
We’ve seen the enemy.….….…..
we have seen the enemy and bean-counting hospital administrators are among them.
the video is being shown world-wide and I feel great shame that people are treated like throw-away objects in our hospitals.
for 24 hours she waited for a room. and when she fell over, no one came to help until it was far too late. it is claimed that 6 people lost their jobs due to their indifference to humanity. the fat-asses above them need to be canned, too. I will gladly lend my foot for the booting.
I cannot believe such shit occurs in our country.
I find it horrifying but not surprising. It is just such a sad sick testament to humanity.
A similar situation occurred in LA; someone forwarded a video to the media after the NYC was aired. I’m sure that when we start seeing more, there will be a great knashing of teeth, a couple of people will be villified and then we’ll go back to doing whatever we were doing.
2 – 1/2 hours in a waiting room today, waiting to see the good doctor for all of 5 minutes. Gosh but I hate them damn hosipals. And still no friggen’ answers.
Yep, the enemy is us. There’s an awful lot of good people working hard in hospitals like that, though.
Though I know there has to be good people i question why there wasn’t one in that hour.
I know that hospital shire some unqualified people, they are short staffed sometimes housekeeping gets retrained to draw blog and so on, but it does seem that those who are the poorest and the weakest and have no family advocate are often treated abominably. If it is a money issue and an insurance issue or a profit issue I think we need to find out. Given the hospital is known for this this is pretty unforgivable.
I think normal hospital from what I hear from people I know in medicine are not necessarily safe if you don’t have family keeping na eye on you I can’t imagine what happens when you are mentally disabled and can’t really even speak partially for yourself.
I just don’t think there are enough good people to counter the bad, for sure not in the case of this woman.
Because of my nature, I am shocked and appalled by this. I expect people to show their humanity, especially at times like this and when they don’t, I simply do not understand why they don’t and more importantly, how they could not.
Although, I have been in a hospital and have had to yell at the damn nurses for them to get off their asses to attend to my mother, who had insurance and is not/was not poor and needed medication to ease her pain. But still it is a travesty, and makes me wrestle with everything that I believe in when something like this happens.
I agree with you, Coop…the enemy has been detected…damn…
There is more than enough to sicken us isn’t there?
i saw that on CNN — disgusting — the People in the Waiting Room did NOTHING!!
just pathetic*
on a lighter note could you fix me up on a Date with Erica Hill!!
;)) Peace*
p.s. something strange happened when i hovered over cooper — it said Leelia??
there used to be a Merry Prankster on Twitter named Sphereo who also went by Leelia so my Antenna went up! + not fer the normal reason when U pop by Coop!!
xoxo
leelia a derivative of lelia and such means “night beauty”. There may be something there. ;)
As much as people with insurance, friends, and family need help when sick and hospitalized these days, those who are poor, especially those who are mentally ill, need it ever so much more.
Makes me dislike my fellow man.
It’s hard to dislike so many people but I’ve come to be disappointed in most human beings.
I saw this on Countdown’s Worlds Worst Persons.
It only serves to further my views about all forms of bigotry. Racism, sexism, heterosexism, religious intolerance… they’re all woefully shortsighted. Misantrhopy is the ticket.
Of course, I make a few exceptions, but on the scale of things they’re really quite rare.
Misanthropy: A form of bad acting, or acting bad,on the stage of life.
Life is a play, the universe a theater, the only reality is death –
the conquerer worm.
You know what they say about stories like this, Miss Cooper. Anything you hear or gets reported probably only represents a small percentage of what actually is going on. In this case I fear it’s the smallest tip of a very large iceberg hidden beneath the waters.
There are many like it I’m sure. II hope technology forces up to do something about it.
I saw this report but couldn’t bring myself to watch the video. The underlying idea behind this is a total disregard for humanity — which in other reports you see in the use of psychomedication to quiet any of the patients who might dare to complain about the treatment.
If only we could put all the energy into the health field that is expended for the “defense” industry (aggression industry would be a better word). Why is the optimization of death more profitable than the optimization of life?
This would certainly be tough for gentle souls such as yourself Inde.
Most would prefer not to see as with any situation which makes one feel uncomfortable or is so horrific we don’t want to believe it.
The words enhanced with the video make this all to real and perhaps more clear to people than the simple words would have. It’s as if she were an animal.
I agree having video of this might be helpful in preventing this and getting people to look at what is happening out there.
Cooper my father died 17 years ago and he used to tell me to hire my own nurses if I went into the hospital and if I became really rich endow a wing to ensure some civilized treatment
I was a medical social worker and would never condone Green’s treatment. I will say that when you pay people substandard wages and have overworked and minimal staff you risk a lot.
I would have never worked at Kings County because of its rep
I’m dreading my apartment not selling, not getting a book contract and having to go to work as a social worker for the city of New York
That’s my awake nightmare.
I had heard of it while living in NY never with the degree of passionate contempt and abhorrence that it appears should have been conveyed.
Many of my relatives in the medical field have always said one must have an advocate when hospitalized, preferably one with some medical knowledge if possible.
That’s pretty sad.
Seeing this reminds me of certain things I saw in places that you wouldn’t care too much to discuss. So, here’s one story.
An epileptic was locked up with me and 40 others. He had several seizures while in that state of affairs. Strangely enough, he was ‘assigned’ to a top bunk — not good. He fell twice from this rack onto a concrete floor, and the last time, had to have a dozen stitches put in his head.
He was a petty thief — not exactly a big deal, IMHO. But believe it or not, after the second time falling, we moved him to a low bunk, and kept more of an eye out for him because it took 20 minutes for them to get to him after conking himself the 2nd time. (We had to stop the bleeding and created a cold compress to do the deed.)
Anyways there are more stories like this everywhere…
Side note: trying to revamp wordpress blog, any pointers???
Sad that there is though. Those stories I mean.
As for wp.com it is slight frustrating but pick a quiet theme.
i don’t like three column themes but use it for the Darfur blog because of the volume of information there. I am hoping the soon have a separate links page theme which they are considering.
sadly this is happening over here too…
but not just in hospitals.…
teachers (who are responsible for our future youth) are shoddy …lazy…and totally incompetent…
I’m so glad my daughter who I insisted on being accelerated is finishing her year 12 (at 16 yrs)…
I don’t envy her those last few months.…in our pathetic school system :0
unfortunately these facilities need to be under surveillance 24 hours a day IMO if we are to see any changes
It is pervasive this disregard for humanity.
People not caring about anything.
I don’t care if the aren’t getting paid enough, are untrained and ignorant. There are some things that are just not right and this was one of them.
Bringing the term “survival of the fittest” to a whole new level, and putting us on level with animals.
Survival of the fittest…brings to mind some of those books written by writers from long ago, writers who knew and warned us.…
I understand why everyone is so focused on the issue of mental health in regard to this particular case but nearly every blog entry I read about this incident totally ignores the role that race and class had to play in this. There was a study done at the U of T a few years ago which discovered that WOC are placed in mental institutions at higher rates than white women.…with this in mind how can we ignore the racial overtones?
You’re right. I ignored it as well, not mentioning the fact that Kings County Hospital serves mostly minorities and there is along standing problem there with the poor care given over time, and the lack of consideration the powers that be in the city give to the hospital just because it serves a large poor and of color population.
I think, for me , the impotence I feel in situations like this prevent me from pointing out thing sI feel I can not do anything about, especially things that are unforgivable and should have been addressed long ago.