The Appalling Silence of Good People

At long last I have the time and brain energy to devote to some pleasure writing.  Really though this piece is more on the order of a purge.  This most recent school term is finally done and I am taking an eight week pause.  My time and energies have been spread thin between many conflicting, time constrained and urgent matters.  I felt like I was thrown so many balls that it took perfect precision and concentration to keep them all aloft. Task accomplished.   

I have also been busy in consultation with friends, human resources, several attorneys and even an EAP (employee assistance program).  I am figuring what my next move should be.  The EAP has been unexpectedly helpful assisting me in reframing my views on life and work and in supporting my actions to defend myself and move on.  It is what I am doing now.  To be quite honest I hope to keep staying a step ahead of the game that is afoot.  It is in reality a game.

I am done with this season.  I am tired of the drain and of the lack of sunshine and joy.  I think though that it was all necessary to help me understand things about me, about my life ambitions and about my career goals.  In this most recent class we dealt mostly with vulnerable populations. Some of the subjects were the elderly, the poor, intimate partner violence and global health challenges such as lack of healthcare, nutrition, proper sanitation and clean drinking water. 

Quite frankly these vulnerabilities I have seen first hand in foreign countries.  I remember at twelve years of age, a trip we children took into the jungle with our Mom and her best friend a surgeon.  The purpose was to offer medical and surgical services to a remote village.  We kids played in the river with the village children while our respective parents cared for the ill and injured.  I remember listening to their conversation on the trip home about a man who’d been badly burned and others they had cared for that day.  Certainly this experience and others shaped my decision to become a nurse. 

The point is that may have unwittingly been drinking the corporate Kool-Aid these past many years.  My current job requires me to represent hospital administration.  I believed we were giving the best care possible to our patients.  I no longer believe that.  It is painfully obvious now that this administration is about greed and profit margins and cares not at all for patient wellness and safety.  I was instructed this week by a senior nursing leader to lie about our capacity to handle patients.  I didn’t.  Instead I conveyed the expectation.  I made it clear that I did not agree with it and that I also did not have the power to change it.  All I could say was that I would support and problem solve with them to help find a better solution.  I went back to my office and cried.  

I was appalled that this nurse leader had so completely lost vision of the grounding principle of our profession, “to devote oneself to the welfare of those committed to our care...” I began to wonder at my profession, at healthcare in general and at the direction we are taking in this country.  I recently read a Time Magazine article entitled “Bitter Pill” about the realities of healthcare in our country.  I realized that at this moment I would rather be living in a tent in some desolate foreign place caring for humanity rather than helping to pad someone’s annual bonus.  
  
When do you decide that you can no longer compromise your values?  How does one find a voice to speak out?  Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”  I have never been one to jump to the front line carrying a sign and shouting my views.  I still am not.  But I also realize that I do have another voice.  I am a writer.   I plan to spend some time in the next several weeks smartly and covertly flexing my pen. 

I am also trying to find my way.  I have practical things I need to take care of.  After this break I need to focus on finishing school.  I also desperately need another job.  I have wonderful friends who have made generous offers of support and I am truly blessed in this regard.  I do fear the repercussions of those whose power, resources and bank accounts trump mine.  It is why I am looking elsewhere.  I realize though that I cannot completely turn my back on the underlying issue and walk away.  Perhaps it is age that gives me a voice.  Or maybe it is just the determination that I will not tolerate injustice any more.