#poor healthcare

[decodedlvr]

so this nurse who was taking my blood decided to clean someone else’s blood off the bed, and was ab to proceed to put a needle in me with those same gloves on UNLESS I or mom would have said something

Jesus Christ

[kind-of-obsesive]

The Impact of Queerphobia on the Treatment and Health outcomes of Queer Patients in Canada.

What are the impacts of queerphobia on the treatment and health outcomes of queer patients in Canada? Queerphobia, and its counterpart, heteronormativity, contribute to the poor treatment and health outcomes of queer patients in Canadas current medical system. Most medical providers are not educated on working with queer patients, despite the widespread societal acceptance of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, leaving them floundering when queer patients come to them for help. Heteronormativity is also still very prevalent in the medical system, lowering the quality-of-care that queer patients receive, making their treatment and health outcomes poorer. Queer patients are made to feel unsafe due to the discrimination they face from healthcare providers, and this can make them less likely to seek help, lowering their health outcomes in turn. Queerphobia greatly impacts the treatment and health outcomes of queer patients in Canada.

Despite societies growing acceptance of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, which in turn, prompts more people to share when they fall outside of the typical norm, most healthcare providers are not being formally educated on manors surrounding the queer community, nor are they studying as part of their commitment to lifelong learning. During the study Snelgrove et. al. conducted, a doctor mentioned “Formal education around trans healthcare was described as absent from medical school and residency curricula” (2012). Lee and Kanji point out in their research that “some healthcare professionals appeared unversed in queer terminology, which added to the stress of individuals who felt responsible for educating their health care provider and justifying their identity” (2017). Greta et. al. state that “Approximately 54% [of the participants] reported having to educate their providers “some” or “a lot” about trans issues” (2014). These quotes highlight that healthcare professionals are not taught how to interact with queer patients or handle the issues they might face in relation to them being queer. Lee and Kanji go on to suggest that the lack of knowledge causes discomfort for the healthcare professionals and that the “notable discomfort from health care providers made the individuals feel uncomfortable and unable to speak openly about their health concerns” (2017). When a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ feels that they cannot speak openly to their health care provider, it makes it harder for queer patients to get the medical assistance that they need, making the outcomes worse as a result.

Heteronormativity is the belief that heterosexuality is the only normal sexuality (Merriam-Webster, 2024) and cisnormativity is the belief that cisgender people, people whose gender matches their sex assigned at birth, is the only normal gender expression.  Within the healthcare system, working under the assumption that all people fall under the umbrella of heterosexual and cisgender can negatively impact 2SLGBTQIA+ people's health outcomes. Bauer et. al. finds that “Twenty-one percent … of trans Ontarians reported ever avoiding the [Emergency Department] when emergency care was needed specifically because of concerns relating to accessing [Emergency Department] care as a trans person” (2014). This can be reasoned by Lee and Kanji’s findings: that “LGBT respondents reported that the assumption that everyone is heterosexual and cisgender was a major barrier to forming a trusting relationship with their health care provider” (2017). Trust is one of the five components of the nurse client relationship according to the College of Nurses Ontario (2006), as it allows the patient to feel comfortable being open and honest to their healthcare team; when that trust is broken, not only are the patients less likely to be honest, but also less likely to seek healthcare in the first place.

The possibility of facing discrimination can pose a significant barrier to seeking care for many queer people, as it compromises their sense of safety. Lee and Kanji found many “reactions of health care providers to an individual’s coming out ranged from embarrassment to excessive curiosity, hostile displays, direct rejection, unwarranted pity, condescension, and denial of care” (2017). Reactions like these can make it hard for people that are a part of the queer community to feel safe when seeking healthcare. Taha noted in her study that “many participants shared how lack of safety in the context of receiving healthcare services was experienced as traumatic” (2018), she then continues on saying that facing discrimination can make queer people less likely to seek care when they need it. Giblon and Bauer found “21% of trans people in Ontario had avoided going to the emergency department in a medical crisis specifically because they were trans” (2017) and lists one of the major reasons as the “high frequencies of harassment and discriminatory practices experienced by trans individuals in health care settings” (2017). Looking at the data, avoiding seeking healthcare when needed can “pose a threat to the health of LGBT individuals and result in emotional distress, inadequate care, and lack of appropriate medical attention” (Lee & Kanji, 2017)

There is little formal education on queer topics for healthcare professionals, and they aren’t often pursuing it themselves, leaving them helpless when trying to help queer patients. Most healthcare professionals work under the assumptions of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, creating a lack of trust between queer patients and their healthcare team, reducing the effectiveness of the care they provide. Most concerningly, queer people often face unsafe environments in healthcare settings due to the discrimination that is caused by them coming out as queer. In conclusion, it is clear that queer people are facing worse treatment and poorer health outcomes than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts due to systemic and non-systemic queerphobia.

References.

“Heteronormative.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,

Cisnormativity. (2024). In Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved April 5, 2024, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/cisnormativity

Bauer, G. R., Scheim, A. I., Deutsch, M. B., & Massarella, C. (2014). Reported Emergency Department avoidance, use, and experiences of transgender persons in Ontario, Canada: results from a Respondent-Driven Sampling survey. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 63(6), 713-720.e1.

College of Nurses of Ontario. (2006). Therapeutic Nurse-Client Relationship, revised 2006. College of Nurses of Ontario. Retrieved April 1, 2024, from https://www.cno.org/globalassets/docs/prac/41033_therapeutic.pdf

Giblon, R. Bauer, G. (2017). Health care availability, quality, and unmet need: A comparison of transgender and cisgender residents of Ontario, Canada. Giblon and Bauer BMC Health Services Research, 17, 283. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2226-z

Lee, A., & Kanji, Z. (2017). Queering the health care system: Experiences of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Queering-the-health-care-system%3A-Experiences-of-the-Lee-Kanji/4a21576b1af93507855e2d1ed887 91846bc1fcf2

Snelgrove, J. W., Jasudavisius, A. M., Rowe, B. W., Head, E. M., & Bauer, G. R. (2012).

“Completely out-at-sea” with “two-gender medicine”: A qualitative analysis of physician-side barriers to providing healthcare for transgender patients. BMC Health Services Research (Online), 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-12-110

Taha, R. (2018, November 1). “It’s hard enough for the people doing the work to access these services”: Sexual Healthcare Barriers that LGBTQ2S+ Populations Experience in a Rural Canadian Community. https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/24029

[realstrap]

05/25/2024

Hey, still struggling, still need to eat and get to work

We have no money to eat, my partner is recovering from a knee injury and I have no idea how I'm going to get to work tomorrow since I don't get paid until next week

We're really struggling and I can't lose this job, I need at least $25 to get to work tomorrow and at least $200 total to make it to next week please help us out!!!!

CA: $lezsalt or $sleepyhen

VM: wildwotko

Dm 4 PP

[odinsblog]

Funny how SCOTUS “originalists” ignore this history

Benjamin Franklin is revered in history for his fixation on inventing practical ways to make everyday life easier. He was a prolific inventor and author, and spent his life tinkering and writing to share his knowledge with the masses.

One of the more surprising areas Franklin wanted to demystify for the average American? At-home abortions.

Molly Farrell is an associate professor of English at the Ohio State University and studies early American literature. She authored a recent Slate article that suggests Franklin’s role in facilitating at-home abortions all started with a popular British math textbook.

Titled The Instructor and written by George Fisher, which Farrell said was a pseudonym, the textbook was a catch-all manual that included plenty of useful information for the average person. It had the alphabet, basic arithmetic, recipes, and farriery (which is hoof care for horses). At the time, books were very expensive, and a general manual like this one was a practical choice for many families.

Franklin saw the value of this book, and decided to create an updated version for residents of the U.S, telling readers his goal was to make the text “more immediately useful to Americans.” This included updating city names, adding Colonial history, and other minor tweaks.

But as Farrell describes, the most significant change in the book was swapping out a section that included a medical textbook from London, with a Virginia medical handbook from 1734 called Every Man His Own Doctor: The Poor Planter’s Physician.

This medical handbook provided home remedies for a variety of ailments, allowing people to handle their more minor illnesses at home, like a fever or gout. One entry, however, was “for the suppression of the courses”, which Farrell discovered meant a missed menstrual period.

“The book starts to prescribe basically all of the best-known herbal abortifacients and contraceptives that were circulating at the time,” Farrell said. “It's just sort of a greatest hits of what 18th-century herbalists would have given a woman who wanted to end a pregnancy early.”

“It's very explicit, very detailed, also very accurate for the time in terms of what was known ... for how to end a pregnancy pretty early on.”

Including this information in a widely circulated guide for everyday life bears a significance to today’s heated debate over access to abortion and contraception in the United States. In particular, the leaked Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade and states that “a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's histories and traditions.”

Farrell said the book was immensely popular, and she did not find any evidence of objections to the inclusion of the section.

“It didn't really bother anybody that a typical instructional manual could include material like this,”she said. “It just wasn't something to be remarked upon. It was just a part of everyday life.”

(continue reading) more ←

[skyloftian-nutcase]

I forgot to share this, @kikker-oma had made this in honor of Abel's surprise appearance in the Healthcare AU and gave me permission to share it, so here it is in all its glory because she is an absolutely phenomenal artist <3 <3 <3 Healthcare Hyrule in his element, and Abel having a pretty typical day for his sad, angsty life (RIP my beloved blorbo LOL)

[ohmerricat]

england we are in shambles

[autisticrosewilson]

Um if you write Jason having to get drugs for Catherine I want you dead btw. Not only does it tell me you assume the average drug dealer would give the hard shit to a very small child and then not supervise them at all (classist stereotype that all drug dealers are inherently evil + lazy writing with no grasp on reality) and you genuinely think that Catherine was CONSTANTLY high, as if that's even possible without overdosing far sooner than she did. That's without even getting into the bad mom Catherine propaganda.

[uncanny-tranny]

Whether or not the adage that chronic stress is as bad as smoking is or true or not, hearing that and knowing that a huge stress factor is often one's continued financial, housing, and food security really should radicalize more people. The idea of stress being damaging to long and short-term health should make you stop and wonder what contributes to stress in the first place, and if preventative measures would inevitably be a net benefit to the overall health and wellbeing of everybody

[pixelglam]

I love my game

[bloodyarson]

okay but a thing i think about every time we have one of those few day periods where the weather is not fit for even a dog being outside is how the hell are homeless people surviving this. like i said in a previous post it's currently -40 degrees with the windchill and i honestly cannot imagine how someone who does not have a place to go inside and spend the night is supposed to not freeze to death. it makes me upset every time the temperature drops like this, i cannot imagine how many homeless people will be frozen to death in the next 24 hours if they somehow haven't already. the fact that there are hundreds of empty houses sitting there empty with totally functional heating while people are DYING from the cold on a street corner makes me SO FUCKING ANGRY while at the same time my heart is breaking in pieces for them. rest in peace to every poor person who will not make it through the weekend. i am so sorry.

[decodedlvr]

vent post

I’ve been going through so much I’m afraid all the pent up stress is going to give me a heart attack.

My hearts been aching for awhile now and everything keeps getting stressful.

A person I went to school with had a heart attack bc he was under a lot of stress

It’s not even my fault I’m stressed , is the sad part. more unwanted things keep happening or getting worse for me it literally wouldn’t even be my fault. So Idek anymore. Fearful

[booasaur]

When the WCK aid workers were killed, I said nothing would change, they wouldn't get justice, their families wouldn't get justice. There was some noise and I hoped I was wrong, but has anything changed? Was there any kind of justice?

Now we have this situation unfolding:

To attempt to evacuate these doctors, they have to do a trial run to see if Israel will shoot the UN/international aid workers:

Monica Johnston, a nurse volunteering at the hospital, said that a primary concern of those who will be leaving is that new humanitarian workers be allowed in, otherwise the hospital campus is more likely to get overrun by the Israel Defense Forces. The plan, she said, is for the U.N. to do a test run from the hospital to the border Tuesday, only carrying U.N. staff. If those staff are not killed by the IDF — as one international employee was on Monday — then on Wednesday two medical staff will be taken to the border, and two new volunteers will be allowed in to replace them, and so on in coming days.

In the UN vehicle that might have rescued them:

One of the surgeons trapped, in fact, the one who said he'd seen more child amputations in the last two weeks than in his entire career before, saved Tammy Duckworth's life in Iraq 20 years ago.

""Save him." Save him from who? Our ally.

That nurse quoted above about the trial run, Monica Johnston, had more to say in this interview on NPR:

Monica Johnston, a burn nurse from Portland, Ore., had been treating Zain, the 7-year-old patient, since he was admitted last Wednesday with blast injuries that left 90% of his body burned. He never regained consciousness and died early Sunday morning. "When they took him to the morgue to prep his body all his burns were infested with maggots," she said. ' I just want to help. We all just want to help. But we have no tools to do it." ... "I came thinking we could do some good, despite our webinars and preparation explaining how dire the situation was here," said Johnston, a nurse with 20 years of experience. "But as time goes on we're all feeling absolutely useless and helpless and hopeless. It feels like everyone we see in the ICU ends up dying." ... Most of the American medical staff are experienced conflict zone volunteers. This was Johnston's first mission. She said she came because her skills as a burn nurse were needed — but nothing prepared her for the things she would have to do. She said after changing dressings for Zain, the 7-year-old, she decided not to continue the extremely painful process. "You know, I think the local staff understood because I think they've seen that pattern of death. But some of my teammates were taken aback," said Johnston, 44. "It was so hard to get across that it's not that I'm giving up on him. But if I do his dressings as often as they need to, to stay clean, I will deplete our entire wound care resources just on him.

[lgbtlunaverse]

I think a lot of people's perception of "US centrism" on this site is "americans assuming us-specific problems are universal" but i've found it just as often if not more often manifests as the opposite. Usamericans thinking a problem people deal with worldwide (food deserts, late stage capitalism, bigotry) or a problem that did start primarily in the US but has been exported worldwide via cultural imperialism (this particular example is not the us but canada, but I sure did looooove having trucker protests in my country after they got 'inspired' by those in north america /s) are things only they have to deal with. I regularly get tags on this post that say something like 'blame the puritans for ruining american society' or will straight up go '#usa #fuck this country #i bet the rest of the world doesn't have this problem' I am from the Netherlands and have never set foot on the american continent.

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Four was honestly surprised how many people were here. It was his first big trip, and it was definitely overwhelming. He was usually a loner, but he had to admit… he was thankful he’d asked a friend to come along.

Legend laughed as he texted someone, face glowing with glee. He elbowed Four mischievously. “We should definitely send pictures to Wars.”

“Is that who you’re texting?” Four asked with a smile, enjoying the cheer from his usually grumpier friend. Legend adored education conferences - his friend was nothing if not a lover of learning and exploring new things.

“Oh absolutely,” Legend replied, showing his phone. “He’s upset because I went to the emergency medicine conference and then went to this one. Personally, I think he’s just jealous because I have a cert he doesn’t.”

“Wait, Wars doesn’t have his CCRN?” Four questioned, confused. He figured Warriors, who had everything in his life in order, would have his critical care nursing certification. It was fairly common for nurses in ICU and ED settings.

“Nope!” Legend quipped with delight, obviously ecstatic that he had something over the military nurse.

“Okay, but important question: where are we going to get dinner?”

“Somewhere it doesn’t cost half our paycheck.”

Four glanced around at the skyscrapers. “Uh… not sure we’re going to manage that. I didn’t think the Hebra Mountains had cities like this.”

“Well, then we can contemplate Brugada Syndrome and complicated EKG rhythms while we starve,” Legend supposed.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Four laughed. “This is a trip, we shouldn’t worry about the cost too much.”

”We don’t make Time’s salary.”

“But we make decent salary.”

Legend bit his lips, stubborn. Four narrowed his eyes analytically. “This isn’t about how much the food costs; it’s because you’ve blown your budget on coffee, isn’t it?”

His friend immediately flushed, guilty as charged. “They charge ten rupees for coffee! Ten!! This place is ridiculous!”

“I told you your caffeine addiction would come back to bite you someday,” Four smiled. “Or, well, more so than it already has.”

“I swear, if you bring up the SVT episode one more time—”

[angelofsmalldeath-codeine]

The elections are over in the UK.

Shabbaz has a really good summary of the current situation. It’s worth taking a look.

And if my peeps over here live in the UK, please go out and vote in every election. Demand accountability from your local representatives. You can hold them accountable when they aren’t living up to their manifesto.

I no longer live in the UK. I was one of the many European migrant workers that left because of Brexit. The environment was hostile, the whole settlement scheme was giving dejavú of the Windrush scandal. Residency was now dependent on work visas, citizenship no longer attainable.

If you still live in the UK do your utmost to keep the tories out. Jacob Rees Mogg does not have your best interest at heart, his businesses are not even located in the UK. Boris Johnson got his French passport while he was pushing for Brexit. They’ve trashed the country to let you living in rubbles while they have a escape route.

[deepbreakfast]