nurses Archives - Where Is The Outrage?

News Roundup: Blogging, Nurses, Obama interview

I got into this blogging thing around 2005, so I’ve been doing this for almost 10 years. In the early days, I struggled to get an audience. I remember getting very happy when I got 5 to 10 comments. Over the years, the wild, wild blogosphere has consolidated into a few, very popular political blogs. Most of us independent bloggers have decided to do other things – Facebook, Twitter, etc. Anyway, it was fairly common back in 2007, 2008 to get a random comment from a troll. No big deal. You can ignore it. You can delete it or you choose to comment on it. If you comment, you have to understand the risks and benefits. This brings me to a comment from Constructive Feedback who in his first real sentence states that j he’s a “Black Quasi-Socialist Progressive-Fundamentalist Racism Chasers.” It is nice to get an honest opinion from someone who has no idea who I am. 😉

NPR has a GREAT series on nursing injuries. The latest installment was about a nurse at my former hospital, Mission Hospital. This simply needs to be read or listened to. In my opinion, there is no better group of people on this planet than nurses. They need to be protected (and paid).

Obama had a GREAT interview on Vox, an on-line magazine/newspaper. Check it out. It is really, really good. Ezra Klein and several others got together to form Vox. They were going to better job at covering the news and explaining the news. There are some great graphs which accompany this interview. They actually explain what Obama is talking about. Think of them as reinforcing the facts.

Oklahoma House votes to eliminate AP history.

Hey, did you know that Jeb Bush was interested in running for president? Damn! Who knew? Well, he gave a foreign policy speech which said…nothing. Are you surprised? If he would have given a bold speech, then he would have been attacked by everyone else who is running for president. So, he gave a luke-warm piece of Republican spin that really has no substance. BTW, did you know that ISIS was Obama’s fault and Bush supports the US spreading liberty in the world? Where have we heard that phrase – spreading liberty….

By ecthompsonmd|2015-02-21T12:06:20-04:00February 18th, 2015|Blogging issues, Education, Healthcare|2 Comments

Conservative Freak Out (Update)

It was this itty-bitty little graph that caused conservatives to absolutely lose their minds last week. Basically, a study from the Pew Research Center revealed that there are a lot of women who are the sole breadwinner or the major breadwinner in their households. For those of us who live in the reality-based world, we’ve recognized for some time that the “Leave It to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best” male-dominated models of the household simply don’t exist to the extent that they did back in the 1950s in the United States. This changed for a variety of reasons. Yet, conservatives simply want to blame women for this trend. Oh, let me correct myself. Conservatives would like to blame “liberated” women for this trend.

If you want to blame someone, there’s plenty of blame to go around. First of all, and my blame list is in no particular order, one of the glaring facts that springs off the page when you read this study is the fact that women get paid less for doing the exact same job as men. Why is this? This is simply a fact of gender discrimination. From my personal vantage point, as a physician, I’ve seen nurses’ salaries stagnate and even regress over the past 20 years. It is clear that there are more women who go in the nursing than men. Nurses, outside of California, have yet to band together to demand higher salaries. Instead, what we see in the nursing profession is that nurses after five, 10 or 15 years will leave a hospital because the work load is too hard, the hours are too long and the salaries are too small. So, nurses will move to doctors’ offices for better hours and a decreased workload in exchange for… wait for it… most the time, lower salaries. (more…)

By ecthompsonmd|2013-06-06T21:56:04-04:00June 6th, 2013|Economy, Education|2 Comments

Boston Marathon tragedy

By now, everyone in the United States should know that at least two and possibly three bombs went off yesterday towards the end of the Boston Marathon. I’m not going to spend any time today talking about the bombs, who made the bombs and what could possibly be the motivations of the sick individuals. Instead, as a trauma surgeon, I would like to congratulate the first responders, the doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel who quickly responded to this tragedy. In the coming days and months we will hear more about the individuals who acted quickly in order to help save a fellow human being. These are the true heroes in this tragedy.

My heart goes out to the great city of Boston. My deepest sympathies go out to the families and friends of the three people who died. My prayers go out to the more than 130 who were injured. My hope is that they have a speedy recovery, both physically and mentally.

By ecthompsonmd|2013-04-16T22:06:37-04:00April 16th, 2013|Terrorism|Comments Off