Community Health Nursing

This semester I am finally being exposed to community / public health nursing. The sad part about this type of nursing is that you don't get paid nearly as much money as in the hospital...which hopefully will change a bit if (and hopefully when) the health care reform is in place. My stance is that everyone should have health care.

I am most likely behind the eight ball on this, but today I found out that our government and President have socialized health care. Did you know this? So, if they have socialized health care and they have plenty of money to actually pay out of pocket for their health, why on earth are they up in arms about expanding socialized health care to all Americans? And yes, most likely everyone will respond with the answer "because of money", but that is a load of shit. Why can't we adopt some basic fundamental practices other countries have in place that lead to better health for the majority and not the minority?

You witness this divide across all aspects of health care. The other week, one of my fellow students was taking care of a man who was going to be discharged into a homeless shelter. He had life threatening illnesses that needed prescriptions, yet he could not pay for them and the hospital couldn't take on his expenses. The ironical part about the whole situation is that the doctors took the time to write him 15 prescriptions. When asked if he knew what they were for, he had no idea. Come on Doc really???

If we had socialized health care this would not have been the case. He would have been sent to get his prescriptions filled, hopefully would have helped his illness and not placed him in the hospital the next day. But still using drugs is the same idea as putting a band-aid on a wound...it helps a little. So the question that we have to ask is why aren't we putting more money into PREVENTATIVE health care???

Trust me it becomes very frustrating to be in an environment where you are constantly putting band-aids and shoving them full of pills. I will do my couple of years as a hospital nurse, but after that social policy, preventative health care and working upstream and not down are where you will find me! Or I will have flown across the pond to the UK.

When are we going to stop being selfish and start to see that EVERYONE deserves health care?