Loss of all personal freedom.

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I am just wondering but as a veteran who fought for his country. Then went to college to become a nurse. How does everyone feel about the loss of personal freedom in healthcare. Hospitals that test for legal substances in the blood (i.e. nicotine) and deny employment. Even in states that workers are protected because hospitals are " non profit" even though we all know they are for profit as you can get cause your CEO drives a jaguar. Denying employment to workers they consider obese and overweight. What are we going to do as Americans and Nurses when they test us for artificial flavorings and sugar products and deny employment. This trend will not stop. The slippery slope has begun.

Nursing is one of the few professions that is regulated internally. If nurses and healthcare professionals don't self-regulate the industry, the government will step in and do it, and we certainly don't want that do we? Nursing is a commitment to ethics, professionalism, and social justice as decided by the forces that govern, so if you don't like it, then yes, take your freedom and work somewhere else.

Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
Coming from a military family freedom can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I know in the Kurdish camps freedom means having their own country and not being suppressed from Sunnis or Shiites. For me freedom means I can say what I want to say baring harmful things like I am going to end your life...threats or for that matter yelling out in a crowd fire when there is none...those kinds of things that stupid people do. Additionally freedom means I can live anywhere I want in the United States and have any weapon I want to protect my family and property. To my friend who is working in Rwanda freedom to them at this time means being able to walk to the well to get water safely. When my kids were teenagers freedom to them meant the ability to go out when they got their drivers license.

Freedom comes with responsibility and responsibility come with restrictions. It is a matter of perspective. I personally like a happy medium. I am not opposed to harsher background checks for my weapons however there is a limit to what I will feel is appropriate (safety classes and background checks are OK to me) I think we need to pick our battles carefully and lean towards a more simple way of thinking. We will not please everyone and if I did I seriously think I did something wrong.

What I an finding is this...

We can go down the slippery slope of no smoking, no hiring obese people, no hiring members of the skin heads, no hiring member that are LGBT, hiring females at a rate 30 percent less...we all have choices I do not care about your smoking as long as I do not have to walk through the smoke on my into the front door, I do not care about your weight unless it is interfering with our working together you cannot do your job, I do not care if you choose to be a skin head as long as you do not talk about what your activities are at work and your treatment of everyone is the same respectful manner, I do not care about who you like male/female/transgender/pansexual it is none of my business unless you make it my business and sue me because I will not make a cake for you (just take your business somewhere else and give them a bad review), and me being a female I can negotiate with the best of them to get the best pay I can.

Business has a right to place criteria in their work environment, we live in a capital world if you do not like it just do not go to that business take your dollars elsewhere, I do. Health Insurance companies do have some blanket policies. Most commercial Insurance companies serve the business, it is the company you work for that determines what kind of benefits they want to give their employees. Insurance companies do not pocket the monies when they do not pay out that money goes back to the company you work for.

We have gone down a many slippery slopes the past 20 years and things keep changing. It is not just corporate greed it is too many divided people who will not meet others half way. Change, real change occurs when diverse people both liberal and conservative band together for a simple common cause/ideal in a manner that is respectful to both sides, no drama just pure willingness to operate together. What spoils the atmosphere is the inability to work together for a common cause despite differences.

Neats, you are so articulate, expressing things that (for the most part) go double for me. I appreciated your ability to organize addressing aspects of the discussion, and succinctly and cogently express your ideas in writing. Heck, I was so impressed, I read it three times, saying "Yeah!" and "Yes!"

As a former patient used to say, after our discussion about whatever's days news we'd heard, "You know, If everyone would just listen to us and see the clear simplicity of our viewpoints and then WOULD adopt and LIVE THEM, the world would be a MUCH more pleasant place!" :) a remark with which I heartily agree.

It isn't always easy, but the more you practice acceptance of yourself and others, the more second nature it becomes. People are just who and how they are, including me! If people would be more accepting of the fact that EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT, and for very good reasons, be they cultural, psychological, or just as a result of how they were raised and by whom (ie what sort of persons) My Gosh, as many people as there are in the world, that's as many ways there are of doing something. Everybody thinks THEY are 'normal' (whatever that might constitute) and if a person could visually 'see' what's going on inside someone else's head, and get a good glimpse of the reality of that other person's life, they'd be amazed, horrified, sympathetic, annoyed, astonished. All those other people outside us are SO different. And how DARE they think, act, say ...whatever.

This THING that goes on now, the thingS that are happening everywhere and each more horrible than the next. The world's a sometimes scary place to be. Seems like people ricochet off each other, utterly determined that THEY are *RIGHT* and civility be damned.

The personal life vs work life and insurance companies, gah what a cluster. I believe what I do on my own property, on my own time, is my own business. At work, I was at work and (mostly) would abide by the rules abide by the rules.

I can't really complain about health insurance and Medicare is actually pretty good ... though it IS going up again this year by $7 or so additional dollars per month, with fewer services available. They NEED that $84 annually! Far be it from me to squawk, (yuh, right.)... But they reduced the amount of my social security this time by ... get this ... 40 cents less per month for me. Yeah, because they NEED that that extra $4.80 per year, since the gov't dipped into social security funds ... again. No wonder it's going broke with sticky Washington fingers nabbing some money for their pet projects.'tsk, tsk, tsk!

However, I really miss that my Dr's appt's aren't just between the two of us and his actions are now dictated by actuarial tables and ever-changing rules and regulations, and decisions by numbers instead of by individual circumstances.Insurance is, I suppose, a necessary evil, but stil ... And it used to be you knew all the people you dealt with, now just some 'THEMs' vs us, and we lose. The world has lost personalization,and is too big, too dense, too troubled, too much, only computers can "handle" things so we are at their mercy. Yes, that's dramatic, but it is also quite true in places.

And then there's the "That's how it is and we-don't-have-to-like-it-we-just-have-to-do it, so, we just-do-it. I think that's where many us stand on this issue.

My helpful mantra, when I can summon it, is a shrug and an: "Oh, Well."

Correct.

"In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available to an average citizen in America right now... God almighty, what have we done to each other?" ~ Merle Haggard, an American country singer

The youth doesn't know what freedom means. They are too accustomed to being bound to know the difference.

The youth doesn't know what freedom means. They are too accustomed to being bound to know the difference.

"And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

And get off my lawn!

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.

However, I really miss that my Dr's appt's aren't just between the two of us and his actions are now dictated by actuarial tables and ever-changing rules and regulations, and decisions by numbers instead of by individual circumstances.

Insurance companies are having a big impact on practice: dwindling reimbursements means less time with patients, outcome measures mean less individualized care, more prior auths mean more difficulty getting appropriate tests done and meds prescribed, higher deductibles mean more out of pocket costs and less compliance/adherence, etc

I do not care if you choose to be a skin head as long as you do not talk about what your activities are at work and your treatment of everyone is the same respectful manner

I understand the argument you were using to express this, but we're talking about neo-Nazi, white power skin heads right? Maybe if you're white you might be able to turn a blind eye to what they do out of work since they never will bother you, but I don't ever imagine ever living in a world where the activities of that group are acceptable.

Back to the smoking argument: yes, skin heads are free to say what they want, (our constitution guarantees that) but employeers are free to find another person to work for them instead of the skin heads. Because most employeers and people find the activities of skin heads abhorrent. I'd argue that in our multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious society, the presence of a skin head at work would be disruptive.

Tying in to veterans: my grandfathers and great uncles didn't fight in WWII, and I didn't serve in the military to make sure skin heads are ever to be granted a comfortable place in society. We can argue about the slippery slope of what's acceptable, but neo-Nazis will never be anywhere near that slope in that discussion.

As for baking a cake for LGBTQ people, change LGBTQ to "black" and maybe you'll see how it's not right.

I understand the argument you were using to express this, but we're talking about neo-Nazi, white power skin heads right? Maybe if you're white you might be able to turn a blind eye to what they do out of work since they never will bother you, but I don't ever imagine ever living in a world where the activities of that group are acceptable.

Back to the smoking argument: yes, skin heads are free to say what they want, (our constitution guarantees that) but employeers are free to find another person to work for them instead of the skin heads. Because most employeers and people find the activities of skin heads abhorrent. I'd argue that in our multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious society, the presence of a skin head at work would be disruptive.

Tying in to veterans: my grandfathers and great uncles didn't fight in WWII, and I didn't serve in the military to make sure skin heads are ever to be granted a comfortable place in society. We can argue about the slippery slope of what's acceptable, but neo-Nazis will never be anywhere near that slope in that discussion.

As for baking a cake for LGBTQ people, change LGBTQ to "black" and maybe you'll see how it's not right.

Please do not confuse skin-head for neo-Nazi, different subcultures. Some skinheads may be neo-Nazis but not all and definitely not the majority. Most are apolitical but there is a very large group who are far left anarchists, socialists, or even anti-fascist.

Just as the Black Panthers and socialists have become more centrist and accepted in society I can foresee one day the neo-Nazis leveling out and being accepted.

Sounds crazy now but could you imagine what someone would have said about communists in the 50s or 60s?

Personally, my licensure and career help keep me in check.

Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

"Skinheads" here where I live are really "only" shaved-headed, tattoo'd, tobacco-spittin', beer-swilling, Bubba-Rednecks. Granted they are not an especially fun crowd to be around en masse; they do have some of the same prejudices as the neo-nazi's, but I don't think they are as quite as extreme as those White Power Militias. Mostly mouthy morons of breath-taking ignorance, minus the organization power. Still could be dangerous, for sure, if boozed up, but as individuals, overall, fairly spineless.

Specializes in CRNA, Finally retired.
So when all employees in this country have to be female 20 to 30 year olds and weight 125lbs with blonde hair and blue eyes cause it's apealin to the person doing the hiring and it looks professional. Your good with that?

There ain't enough of us to go around.

Please do not confuse skin-head for neo-Nazi, different subcultures. Some skinheads may be neo-Nazis but not all and definitely not the majority. Most are apolitical but there is a very large group who are far left anarchists, socialists, or even anti-fascist.

That's true. However, how many people think of "good" skin heads when mentioned?

I'm willing to bet not many.

Racist Skinhead | Southern Poverty Law Center

Your personal freedoms are not being taken away. You have the freedom to do as you see fit, and live a lifestyle you see fit..

Your personal freedom does not include working ANYWHERE you wish. You have to follow the rules policies, and regulations of each jobsite.

Do not like the policies? Work somewhere else.

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