I have always thought that our values inside of a hospital directly conflict with our society’s values. We say “do no harm,” and our society builds preschool to prison pipelines. We say children deserve to feel safe and our society throws away food they could be eating because they didn’t pay $3.25. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars placing a patient on ECMO, CVVHD, getting scans at the end of their life for something that could have prevented for much less money fifteen years ago, but for those fifteen years our society had said “they did it to themselves,” “they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and ignored their needs. We treat patients in the hospital with medical therapy that they need, only to discharge them on subpar drugs because that is what their insurance will pay for. This isn’t even getting into the absurdity of requiring employment for health insurance- which leaves patients with chronic illnesses and disabled adults completely dependent on who they married or were born to for their medical care. . It is impossible to do no harm in a system like ours. The rhetoric surrounding insurance and income always goes down to personal responsibility. But I don’t know how you can see someone struggling with an illness they didn’t ask for in the hospital and think that they don’t have a right to get the best care we can give. . . #procreate #illustration #webcomic #healthcare #resident #intern #inpatient #doctor #relatable #womeninmedicine #blackdoctors #graphicmedicine #premed #premedmotivation #residency #internalmedicine #medschool #medicine #medicalschool #medlife #md #medstudent #nurse #physician
I.M. Resident only a little jaded.