Awareness ribbons looped on lapels. Around trees. Through chain-link fences. Yellow for missing children and bone cancer. Red for heart disease and HIV/AIDS. Blue for chronic fatigue syndrome and arthritis. Even ribbons spotted like Holstein cows raise awareness of birth defects.The best known ribbons of all; pink for breast cancer.Tangles of ribbons reminding us of […]
Death is women’s work. Most people who care for the dying are women. Low-paid health workers who care for dying patients in home hospices are overwhelmingly women. Women outnumber men as nurse’s aides in nursing homes by a wide margin. Two-thirds of people who care for dying relatives are women. The death industry would collapse […]
You Are What You SayCorporate-speak infests healthcare. Buzzwords invaded medicine thirty years ago, but the infection was contained to hospital administration. Now healthcare is controlled by insurance companies, global technology firms and for-profit outfits of all sorts. Business slang, the jargon of greed, is fouling the language of care.The corporate-speak contagion spread, pushed from hospital […]
The professor squinted through cigarillo smoke rings. She listened as fourth-year nursing students discussed ways to help Cambodian refugee families be more independent in their new American home. “This independence drivel is bull s**t. People come for care. Dammit, care for them”, she snapped.The nursing professor was persona non grata in a Central American country. […]