Healthcare Is The New Classroom

The epidemic of violence is something care providers must now ponder

Here we are after another week of multiple tragedies without any meaningful change.

My background and graduate education are in healthcare. I worked for a small-town doc growing up. He started in a trailer and matriculated to an old, yellow office where the basement flooded regularly and destroyed paper records.

Whatever mythology you believe about the glamorous life of a family practitioner in a rural area where half the population is uninsured, let it go.

When I was filling in at the reception area as a teen during summer break, the people I worked with told me how scared they were of the anger that some patients took out on them because the system was difficult to navigate and they punished anyone in their line of sight.

We talked about it regularly, but I can’t say that my barely teenage self understood the seriousness of what they felt. That was in the 1990s.

I get it now after being an adult who has had all the perks of tailored healthcare education and good insurance and open doors for care, yet still, find the American system bewildering and aggravating.

I have seen countless nurses, doctors, and administrative staff suffer the brunt of hatred from the almost justifiable frustration of red tape that rations healthcare by delaying and making the patient fight for justification of essential services.

As the voicemail from the healthcare organization where I receive care states, “Thank you for being a customer”.

Front line staff always get the worst of it, whether we’re talking about the good people trying to earn a living at the cell phone store or the RN crying in a storage closet after an interaction with someone who thinks they are the reason the pharmacy won’t refill their pain meds.

In Tulsa last week, that exact situation occurred. A man who was in pain following a back surgery decided to go buy an assault rifle and execute the doctor.

Healthcare, I’m very sorry to say it out loud, but it will not be the only time this happens. Care providers, it is not your fault any more than the educators who have been enduring this for decades.

The anger in our country over everything is palpable. Healthcare is uniquely vulnerable because by the time a patient gets into a treatment area, they are already infuriated with what it took to get into the room.

If our hospitals become a war zone, where do we send the ambulances?

I guess we need to “harden” the doors of emergency facilities to make sure that people wait outside while they get chest compressions, you know, to be safe.

Healthcare workers, I know you didn’t want this on your windowsill, but it is here.

Unless we start making serious changes to how people access weapons on a whim, the problem will infect the people who care for us.

We haven’t done enough to protect teachers. How about essential healthcare workers?

If we think seeing a doctor is tough now, wait until it requires a security screening through a metal detector and a background check.