Leading Post: The Power of the Female Healer

All three of the readings for today portray the role of women in healthcare positions throughout the US. Carol Mendez begins this trilogy of readings by describing her background as an undocumented immigrant desperately working to live the American Dream in today’s repressive society. Mendez is eventually able to attend college and medical school, thus serving as a female, Hispanic, bilingual physician, and attempting to create social change within the US healthcare system.

Courtney Turner also discusses the power that activism can have within the field of public health. Specifically, Turner discusses her experience working with individuals living with AIDS in the Needle Exchange Program (NEP). Here, she further demonstrates that our healthcare system greatly stigmatizes those who are already oppressed in society (racial minorities, women, drug abusers, etc.). Thus, she posits that the most important change we can make as a society is to remove our judgments of others when it comes to public health so that healthcare can fully be a right for all, and not solely a privilege for society’s top tier.

The last reading for today, written by Jan Oosting Kaminsky, discusses differing views of nursing in today’s world. She states that many feminists turn away from nursing since it is often stereotyped to be a gendered profession. However Kaminsky also postulates that this mindset is counterintuitive to the feminist movement, since, technically, more value should be placed on nursing in society because of its aura as “women’s work” (women hold 94% of the positions within this field!). In reality, nursing serves as an extremely important and undervalued profession. Nurses have the skills and the power to heal others both physically and emotionally, and they act as connection factors between doctors and patients. Kaminsky also describes the nursing shortage that exists today, and she advocates for both men and women to fill the increasing retirement gap in this field to ensure the stability within our healthcare system in the future.

All three of these pieces inspired me as a woman, and as a potential future medical student. I found Mendez’s piece to be especially moving, because it allowed me to recognize how privileged I am to have relatively few cage bars blocking my ability to attend medical school. I further connected with Mendez’s piece because I agree with her observation that those who do not speak English in our country are heavily oppressed via our healthcare system. For the past two summers I worked at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, and I can say firsthand that there is a genuine lack of bilingual doctors in most medical centers (even in this Mecca of healthcare within NYC). Even with my very limited store of Spanish, I could understand just how frustrating the process of describing symptoms can be to those who do not happen to understand patients’ native language.

These three readings also demonstrate that healing is a process much deeper than sole medical treatment. Instead, it requires immense social support, nurturing, and understanding; qualities that women are known to innately hold. Moreover, today women have the potential to claim very unique positions of power in medicine that were previously unheard of. Overall, it is important that we level the playing field for women and for all oppressed workers within our healthcare system for the future health/ well-being of all of us.