Do Hospitals In Your Neighborhood Practice Racial Discrimination Its Not A Farfetched Question

In 2013 in probably the most progressive counties inside the State of Florida, it really is an "open secret" that racial and religious discrimination is practiced in several if not most region hospitals. Appears hard to believe, but when black or other minority hospital personnel report discrimination to management, they learn that a quiet, unpublicized policy allowing racial and religious discrimination exists. The policy can be identified in what officials blog here  call a "hospital-wide directive."

"How could this be," you may wonder? Visualize a sign on a bassinet in the delivery space that reads: "No African American nurses to care for infant, per dad's request."

Paradoxically, this discrimination is justified as part of "patient rights."

A front-page story about hospital discrimination created to safeguard patient rights quoted administrators who defended the policy as essential "to properly care for individuals." A black nurse, removed from a patient's care, asked, "what about my rights?" The answer is her rights had been subordinated by the administration of the hospital as a way to go as well as bigots who demanded that no black folks take part in their care or remedy.

I discovered this remarkable. In Mississippi or Alabama, I could think it. Perhaps Georgia, South Carolina or Texas-sure, this could happen. But Florida? Pinellas County? Quelle horror!

It brings to thoughts a comment by the late Christopher Hitchens in Hitch-22: A Memoir: "The one thing that the racist can never ever handle is something like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition."

How is it that some hospitals in Florida have unwritten policies that guard the rights of bigots to engage in racial discrimination or for reasons associated with religious beliefs? I'm not making this up- it is possible to study the story of such "rights" in an write-up by Weston Phippen. The piece is entitled, "Hospitals Balance a Patient's Request having a Fair Workplace" inside the Tampa Bay Occasions of November 10, 2013.

One black nurse unwilling to subordinate her rights to those of a bigoted white patient filed a lawsuit alleging discrimination in the District Court in Tampa. Ms. Syrenthia Dysart claimed that at Palms of Pasadena Hospital of St. Petersburg, an "open secret" directive violated her correct to a discrimination-free workplace. The case is pending. In Michigan, a comparable case was settled out of court-after the hospital officials apologized, pledged to finish the practice and paid the nurse $200,000.

Though sufferers do have rights, for example to refuse health-related care, to informed consent and to refuse care for whatever explanation, the hospital as well as the employees who operate there have rights, also. A law professor cited within the Occasions story mentioned that if a patient puts an undue burden around the hospital, the facility can advise a patient that it truly is unable to accommodate a discriminatory request. It could then arrange for the patient's transfer to an additional facility, if the patient is able to be moved.

Within a nationwide survey of 127 physicians by the University of Chicago, 20 % reported possessing encountered "race - or religion - related demands from patients. Some research located that accommodating racial prejudices could be useful to bigoted sufferers. A 2003 study cited inside the Instances account "showed that when a patient and doctor are with the very same race, on typical the visits had been more than two minutes longer along with the patient was much more happy with the care."