Prioritizing time: Money vs People vs Patients vs Paperwork vs Reimbursement vs ….
Perhaps in no other time in the history of institutionalized healthcare have lives been so openly and brazenly bargained for money. I say this knowing that I might get a stiff response…and perhaps should evoke outrage….not so much because I wrote this in such absolute terms, but because it is painfully accurate. If I think of those around me, personally around me, whose concern for their health is trumped by their economic survival, the list would be long. Most of my close circle have insurance…but, who trusts that the insurance we have today will take care of us tomorrow?
I know that I wrote this in the Spring, about Jennifer James statement that the US would not have universal health care because we are so addicted to American exceptionalism. All of this being true, the reality is that if we have health insurance we are afraid to lose it (even if we don’t fully understand what “it” is). If we don’t have health insurance, we may con ourselves into thinking if worse comes to worse, something will work out.
And, then, there are the nurses. The bright-eyed, anxious to learn and serve nursing student graduates thrust into an industry that needs them and, subsequently, denies them the time and place to do what they are trained to do: to relieve suffering, assist in the restorative process that patients go through, and bring skill and compassion together. Oh, yes. I forgot. In 120-seconds or less.
I am hardly cynical. Just wanting to live in what I see in order to change it. The way in which we each prioritize our time tells more about our values than how we may spend money. The time we take to consider those we live with in their own distinct nature, the time we take to appreciate our good fortune to live in America (perhaps brought to bear in traveling to Asia once in a while), the time we take to really get a handle on the devastation visited on families by cancer, war, violence… It is just the mood I am in. To be awake to the miracles of each day and take stock of when and where I might make a small difference by noticing what is around me.
The study on how nurses spend their time was a wake up call to me. The question for me is how I spend my time… How do you spend your time? Going back to how I started this entry, bartering what is so meaningful to us, for what is demanded of us ,in a system that needs each of us, to be a stand for what matters…this is what causes burn out. And, what may deaden us to who we are and how much we matter.
Take time to smell the roses, or at least notice the roses that sprinkle us with petals and scents of humanity.