Supervisors at Abington Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia have explained that they sought only to avoid a confrontation when they told African American employees to stay out of a patient's room after a man ordered that no blacks assist in the delivery of his child.
Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 3, 2003
NAACP wants hospital supervisors punished
Local leaders call for Abington hospital to discipline those who told minority staffers to stay out of a patient's room.
Local NAACP leaders yesterday called on Abington Memorial Hospital to discipline supervisors who told minority employees to stay out of a patient's room after a man demanded that only white staffers assist in the delivery of his baby.
( By Oliver Prichard, Inquirer Staff Writer, 10/04/2003 03:01 AM EDT)
Back in 1992 at the start of the Los Angeles riots Reginald Denney was assaulted and hit in the head with a brick by a black criminal. His life was saved by two black people who left their home and drove him to the hospital where the black neurosurgeon (nurses and other staff) saved his life.
DPLEAR:
I hear you. If possible I will as charge assign the nurse a patient requests. Once I did have to tell a patient who asked for a white nurse that the only registered nurse competent to care for the IABP and other technical support needed was black.
That patient thanked the nurse and asked for her to be his nurse after that.
I find this is what generally happens. Patients have the right to refuse care, but they don't have the right to handpick nurses. If they don't want us to care for their children, they can take them out of the hospital. Otherwise, they will get a competent nurse.
People...the patients DO HAVE THE RIGHT to hand pick thier caregivers. That is the backbone of our system. You have the right to choose who you want or do not want to be the people providing your care. Facts of life in a free society.
It's frightening to me how blinded people really can become by their bigotry.
One of the couples at my church is black, husband is an MD and wife is an NP in the ER. They were on a flight to Europe when one of the male passengers (white) fell unconscious d/t a massive MI. Flight crew asked if anyone could help and they obviously both stood up to offer their assistance--could this guy get more lucky?? Amazingly, in the midst of screaming hysterically, the guy's wife refuses to have two "n***ers" touch her husband! Everyone was horrified and actually pulled her away so the couple from my church could work on him. Luckily they had a defibrillator on the plane and were able to keep him alive until they landed but supposedly, he later died.
We were all dumbfounded when they returned home and told us the story. Just the fact that they didn't take this lady out after they stabilized her husband amazes me. I guess I thought we had progressed farther along in our ethnocentric thinking than we really have...
People...the patients DO HAVE THE RIGHT to hand pick thier caregivers. That is the backbone of our system. You have the right to choose who you want or do not want to be the people providing your care. Facts of life in a free society.
Dave
No, they don't here. They have the right to refuse care by whoever they want and they have the right to go where they want for care. But, patients do not have the right to go to the charge nurse and say, "Nancy will be my nurse today, not Sally.". A hospital has to provide care to all its patients and if Nancy is needed elsewhere (which frequently happens in the NICU because of patient acuity), a patient does not have the right to insist that Nancy be her nurse. The charge nurse has to make up the assignments, and sometimes that means a patient doesn't get to custom order her nurse. The patient always has the option of refusing care from a particular nurse, but that is not the same as saying "I want this nurse" in particular.
I would notify the supervisor, physician, and up the ladder is the patient refused necessary care for any reason. Have done so.
As a patient advocate I would rather the patient survive than get his or her way. Of course kindness and attempting to educate the patient are essential.
It IS the registered nurses legal responsibility is my state. It is the ethical and moral obligation of all caregivers everywhere, in my opinion.
Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.
discrimination in assignments is prohibited by medicare conditions of participation law and jcaho.
mc conditions of participation
104. discrimination prohibited
participating providers of services under the hospital insurance program (e.g., hospitals, skilled nursing facilities (snfs), hospices, home health agencies (hhas), outpatient physical therapy (opt), comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facilities (corfs), occupational therapy and speech pathologyproviders, and end-stage renal disease (esrd) facilities) must comply with the requirements of title vi of the civil rights act of 1964. under the provisions of the act, a participating provider is prohibited from
making a distinction in the treatment of patients on the ground of race, color, or national origin, in the use of equipment, other facilities,or in the assignment of personnel to provide services. the dhhs is responsible for investigating complaints of noncompliance.
Karen, what thay says is that you may not discriminate against the patient in making the assignments or providing care. It no where states that the patient may not discriminate in chosing his caregivers.
Fergus, The patient has a right to refuse anyone that they chose to refuse.
It sucks I know and it is not right but that is the law. The patient holds all the cards in reality. In a perfect world not...but we do not live in a perfect world and a person is allowed to be biased any way they want to be.
Yes Dave, they have the right to refuse anyone. The hospital is not obligated to cater to their racist beliefs however, especially when other patients will be affected. Those are two different things.
We've had patients who wanted to pick only white nurses, native nurses, jewish nurses or muslim nurses, etc. But making assignments in the unit is done based on acuity. We will not put an inexperienced nurse with the sickest baby on the unit just because she is white. We will not put the most experienced nurse with the healthiest baby because she is white. That is unsafe and we are not required to do it. We've been there and done that on our unit and we know what we are and are not required to do. We are required to provide competent nursing and medical care. If all the nurses or docs competent to provide that care are coloured, that's what they'll get (and in our unit, that's a distinct possibility on any given day as more than half the unit's staff are "minorities"). The hospital will not endanger its patients by catering to prejuduce.
Guess if i'm a racist and i lay there bleeding to death while waiting for the right race of nurse guess that's my perogative. I'd hope they'd engrave "What an idiot" as my epitaph though.
(Sarcasm)
edited: for a word that could have been imisinterpreted)
We had a Jewish patient who refused to let a Lebanese PCT hook him up... the PCT didn't make an issue of it. He was the nicest guy. The Jewish patient ended up looking like an idiot when it became known that he was prejudiced. Eventually he transferred out and everyone was glad.
I would be up the proverbial creek if I harbored the same prejudices-- most of my doctors belong to one ethnic or religious minority or another. Unfortunately, when you're faced with a serious illness, you cling to your beliefs even if they're illogical. I don't think it's actual racism so much as trying to exert what little control you feel you have left.
But, I guess the only thing I worry about from my limited nursing perspective-is that I value my right to refuse to care for a pt. Just the way I value the right of my african-american collegues to refuse to care for a drunk, physcotic pt making racial slurs. If a pt insults me, or threatens me, or hates me for whatever reason-I value the fact that I can say-I don't want to take care of that pt. My sister-in-laws father is non-prosecuted pedifile. I can't tell you how much I hate that man. If he came into my ER, I think I would ask another nurse to take care of him because I don't think I could without getting emotionally involved. The fact that my collegues would take over without too many questions is commendable. Because I would do it for them.
I just don't want hospitals to install policies that takes that freedom away from us. But, it has to work both ways. If we have that right, than pts should have some sort of say as well> If just say that I had no problem taking care of my sister's father, but he a problem with me, I think that he should be able to voice that. I think that if a pt feels that his nurse's judgement may be compromised-for what ever ridiculous, idiotic or emotional reason, even if we as providers know it is not true, and have tried to explain that--as many people have posted that they have and have successfully turned the situation around-than they need to find another nurse if available.
I don't like it. But I don't want my supervisor to say to my african-american collegues that they HAVE to take care of a blatently racist pt who they don't want to take care of.
Brickman
129 Posts
Patient: "I don't want anyone of that race in my room."
Nurse: "OK, bye bye"
end of story