nursingforsocialjustice

In healthcare we should have moved past a place Policies and practices based on feelings and ideas not grounded in evidence. Standards like mass deportation of immigrants identified as mentally deficient, institutionalizations based on standard IQ, eugenics are all prime examples of ideas based on colonial ideas that were endorse by those in power positions as good and right and reducing harm to the good part of the population.

Creating policies, and procedures without careful examination of years of a data, patient consultation, community consultation, staff consultation, makes me sick go my stomach. And I don’t know exactly how one maintains their dignity when two staff are watching them undress and cough. If this happened to me, multiple times during a hospital stay because of the criteria:

1. Teenager

2. Known (or even potential) substance user

3. Mental health crisis

4. Unobserved by staff for any amount of time off the unit

I would cry. We cannot CANNOT use words like “destigmatize” in programs that simultaneously reinforce stigma and justify this by constructing it as “safety”.

Love,

Michelle D.