[CHATSDALE]

nothing but respect for personnel who work in a burn unit
one of my instructors said that when she was a stutent there were children who were burned n a house fire..they had to debride them and finally lost one to infection
thee definitely needs to be a trained unit within resonable distance in evry part of the country

[peds4now]

If burn units are being shut down I think that is truly a shame. One of my children had a burn injury 6 years ago now, and he was taken to the ED at a very prestigious hospital that is definitely where I'd want to be for any other reason-and they really didn't know what to do with him. They gave him morphine, bandaged him and sent him home, telling me to come back tomorrow for new bandages. But by evening his bandages (torso and one arm) were completely saturated with "boo boo juice" as he said. Over the next few days he swelled up like a cantaloupe, shifting fluid all over the place. He should have been admitted first of all. Then, the severity of the burn was not assessed and communicated well to our PCP or HMO-such that we were referred to a hand surgeon who saw patients once a month. And I almost accepted that, not being an RN yet and believing everyone must know what they are doing. Finally, on about day 5 on the advice of a family friend, we drove him 60 minutes to a nearby hospital with a burn center for his daily ED dressing change. He was admitted immediately and spent 2 weeks there, with surgical debridement, skin from cadavers, hyperbaric chamber, and autologous skin grafts. I just thank G-d he did not get an infection or have some kind of system failure from fluid loss before we got the care he needed. And I'm not bad-talking my local ER-it's a great place!

If burn units are are going to slowly disappear, then your average emergency room staff is going to need a lot more training. I can't even think about how the nurses/doctors un-used to burn care would handle the situation after admission. What you get on your average burn unit is much more than outstanding, specialized care. You get people visiting who've been through it. You get support groups right there. You get specialized psychologists and child life people just dropping in who can talk intelligently on the spot about body image, anger, the pain, etc. You get refrigerators and are invited to stock them with cold cut platters from home for the patient (for the protein and calories, but your average floor nurse would freak at so much "outside food"). We left the burn unit after 2 weeks feeling completely cared for, uplifted, loved, and knowing that although everything wasn't healed and okay yet, we could get through it.

And our injury was relatively minor (though a major crisis for our family)!

[TrudyRN]

Originally Posted by caroladybelle

The money that those insurers pay has to come from somewhere. It can come from their millions and billions in income, from scaling down their corner offices, giving up their yachts and private planes. In fact, get rid of the insurance racket altogether and prices will fall and it won't be so hard to pay those bills. ...and that ends up coming from someone's pocket. Are you offering for it to be yours?

It is fine to expect others (those that you label crooked or greedy) to lose pay to provide services - Amen. , but unless you are willing to shell out your money or your service for free, if you are a HCW that gets a paycheck, you are part of the problem. No, I do not make millions and billions, have no designer clothes or wonderful vacations, no summer home in the mountains or on the coast of Maine. I work for a paltry living and barely survive.

Medical care is finite....there is a limit...and unless one personally wants to see nursing wages cut, one needs to recognize that there is a limit. Not all insurers are crooked, I don't know how either of us is qualified to determine this. "Crooked" is maybe not the best word. What I really mean is that insurers tend to put profit over people. That is not showing the love of God toward one's fellow man. I think it's John Grisham wrote a great story about how the greed of an insurer actually killed a young person with cancer. And this, if you follow the news at all, is what insurers do - deny necessary, lifesaving care. It is criminal in the eyes of decent people everywhere. When we have the means available to do good but don't do it, that, I believe, does not set well with God. but even if they are only making the minimum - there is not enough money to provide all care at its price to all people, unless ALL OF US offer to pay higher insurance rates, higher taxes, donate our services, or work for less. Which do you propose to do, to honor G-d ? Otherwise one is just another greedy person that will be judged lacking before G-d, per your post. See above. Also, I think, from your spelling of G-d, that your gripe is not with my solution, Carol. Rather, it is because you don't like me talking about God in a way that, perhaps, you are not used to.

One can look to England to see that health care for all and getting rid of the "greed", means that health care resources are finite and some things will be rationed, especially to the elderly or those with limited prognosis. Is that more in keeping with what G-d wants? So much for honoring your elders and caring for the weak. I think what He really wants is for us to be more like peoples who do not have the, shall I say, western view of life. It is better, I think, to not view the earth and the bounty thereof as possessable by us. It is better to take care of Mother Earth, use the resources she provides, share them with whoever needs, and not try to own it, keep it for ourselves, or exclude others out of a fear that there won't be enough for us.

We also have to face that many of the advances in healthcare that we see today are the results of someone else's greed. If they did not put in the better parts of their lives to develop vaccines, drugs, equipment and procedures, more people would die of preventable/curable illnesses. And many of these inventors did this in part for money and renown. They may be less likely to work that hard if there is little earthly reward.

Let them have their rewards. Let them also put the honoring of God and caring for their fellow man first.

BTW, I figure I have given so much over my many years in Nursing in the way of "donated" lunch and rest breaks that I have been pretty generous. I do, also, give monetarily to charities of my choosing.

[caroladybelle]

My spelling of G-d is deeply seated in my well-known and traditional beliefs - it is the traditional way of referring to G-d in my religion, which predates Christianity. My beliefs are very important to me, just as important as yours are to you.

My name is not Carol...it is Carolina.

You have this misconcept that there are large numbers of people in insurance make huge amounts of money. The vast majority of them do not have yachts and multimillion dollar estates....they are working people like you and me. Many of them pay bills day by day like we do. The architects support their staffs and their companies, all of those biomedical machines have hundreds of lesser paid factory workers producing.

Many of them also "donate" their time, like nurses do, missing lunches, breaks, time with their kids, all to make sure than can continue to provide health care for the majority in a cost effective matter. Why should they do more than what you are willing to do?

I am also laying odds that many of those "highly paid" individuals bemoan what they consider excessive pay demands of nurses.

Again, it is telling that you ask them to sacrifice money, when you are not willing to put up your churches coffers or yours "for the glory of G-d".

We also should could care for the earth humanely and conservatively, which is a tenet of my religion. Part of that means that we have limited resources and must use them to provide the most care that helps the greatest number of people. It does not provide all services for everything. G-d also made us to have a finite lifespan and made us fragile. There is a purpose in that, that we may suspect but do not know. We are not meant to cure everything or fix everything, but to be the best stewards we can.

You are very determined that there is this vast number of multimillionaires that if they were not so greedy, all could be provided., without any sacrifice from all of us middle or lower class individuals. I do not believe that is so. Neither one of us are likely to change our belief. As such it is useless to trivially argue the matter anymore. Feel free to PM me, but I am out of here.