Last night, here at work, a patient came in for an x-ray.

[markodochartaigh]

24. The hospital

I worked for for three decades had an absolutely spineless, or maybe they agreed with the patients, administration. Sometimes we would have patients who didn’t want a nurse or nurse aide of a particular ethnicity, didn’t want a male nurse, etc. Administration absolutely never backed an employee up on anything whatsoever so it was generally agreed that if a patient who was prejudiced against a certain group didn’t have to interact with someone of that group it was all for the best. It was unusual for them to ask for a particular "classification" of doctor but it did occur. One time a patient insisted on a Black doctor. There wasn't a Black doctor in the e.r. that day. So we had a Tamil doctor see the patient. He was very athletic and spent a lot of time playing soccer in the Dallas sun. His skin was much darker than the patient's skin. The patient had absolutely no understanding that his "Black" doctor was as Caucasian as the physician assistant of Norwegian descent. We had a lot of Malayali staff members and very frequently we had patients get upset that they didn't speak Spanish. We had Muslim nurses in hijabs and patients often thought that they were sisters.