If  we are lucky, most of us will never find out what takes place along the hospital corridors in the middle of the night.  Who is on duty?  What doctors are available?  What resources are available to treat one wave of incoming patients after another.  For his community profile, Angel chose to research the overwhelming responsibility put directly on nurses.  The stress from this job experienced over a long period of time can cause both physical and mental exhaustion.  BURNOUT.  In this essay, Angel combines academic research with personal interviews.  He questioned his own mother – who happens to be an experienced nurse – about the hazards of the job.  Mother knows best.

 

Angel Rodriguez

Jay Lewenstein

English 1A

26 October 2017

A Clinic for Immigrants: Nurses Learn to Hustle Overwhelming Workload 

During weekdays, I would start getting anxious when the clock would strike 4pm because that meant I had less than an hour before my mother to came home from her hard day at work. I would try to clean my house before she arrived, so by the time she entered my home she wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning. After finishing cleaning, I would relax and smell of lemon scent in the air. My feet feeling the clean carpet that I just finished vacuuming. I smile at my cleaning and get prepared to open the door for my mother. My mother arrived the same time to which she would immediately plop down on the sofa. She tells me she’s too tired to move and ask me to bring her a drink for her. I listen and do what she says, but I sigh at how much she tells me to bring her a drink nowadays. Every day after work she arrived home tired and I even see her struggle to even stay awake sometimes. She would talk about her work and the number of patients she had to treat that day. I encouraged her with “You got it mother” to which she laughed at me.

For over a year, private owned clinics have gotten a surge of immigrant patients. The main reason is because of President Trump’s immigrant’s takedown message during his campaign, which caused immigrants to go to clinics that don’t ask for Proof of Citizenship. Some of my cousins even ask my mother questions about their illegal immigrant co-workers, questions like, if her clinic is safer to go than a government owned clinic, or if you need insurance to be given medication if said person was injured. Most news articles would interview clinic, but the clinics being interviewed are mostly government owned. Nurses have suffered from work to the point of working has become unhealthy. My mother has started bad habits to cope with the workload and I’m afraid her habits will one day cause a big mistake in her work.

Are private clinic nurses and doctors getting affected by the new immigrant waves? A massive amount of immigrants have been going to my mother’s clinic, causing her work to become more stressful and tiring each day. This is unhealthy for nurses and if this continues then nurses might quit or the stress from overwork might start having a negative effect on their bodies and even their diagnoses on patients. My mother explained it’s not just undocumented immigrants going to her clinic, but even legal immigrants have started going after her clinic has been recommended for immigrants. The Desert Sun published a report that government owed clinics have become emptier by 40% and most of these missing patients are immigrants. Due to the amount of work nurses have daily, people who are legal have to stop being afraid of deportation and start going to government owned clinics.

My mother works for a private clinic in Coachella known to treat illegal immigrants. Everyday you’ll see my mother moving constantly around her clinic helping patients by giving them their medicine, checking their physical health, and completing paperwork. If you entered the clinic she’ll call for you and examine you. She doesn’t stand out much from her coworkers, but she is a veteran worker. She deals with hundreds of patients a week and still manages check every single one of them in closing time. My mother never finished high school due to her getting pregnant with me and having my brother a few years later. She dreamed of becoming a nurse and she achieved it even after having two children. She worked hard, taking care of me and my brother and going to nursing school every day. She inspires me that even at a late age you can still achieve what you like.  She never gave up from her schooling and managed to land a job she loves.

The article “Hispanic Men often put off Medical Care, bringing bigger trouble” explains how Hispanic men don’t visit a clinic hospital to get their health check. This problem has increased after Donald Trump has become president.  Research statistics has shown that Hispanic men take hard labor jobs, such as construction, which strains their bodies over time if they don’t have regular checkups. Hispanics instead are likely to take worse alternatives, like smoking and drinking, to help cope with their stress. Premature deaths by Hispanic have been slowly increasing overtime and will most likely take the number one ethnic group to have an early death. Counseling centers have been opened to help Hispanic men overcome their terrible habits and hopefully be able to send them to clinics for medicine. It’s sad the people are willing to use bad substances to help cope with their stress bodies after a hard day at work.  The idea for encouraging counseling for Hispanics is a great way to help Hispanics. Being fearful of Deportation is something also fixable if Hispanics were to go to a clinic that’s doesn’t ask for Proof of Citizenship. Hispanic men work hard labors jobs, this increasing their chance of an early death. While I do understand people not getting their health checkups due to lack of money and fear of deportation, I don’t understand why people are willing to start unhealthy habits. Maybe it’s because I’m ignorant, but wouldn’t it be better to not start smoking, giving Hispanics a healthier body. My mother has mentioned that most of her patients were injured at work. “I drink alcohol to numb the pain.” The worse way to worsen your health, but the only way to cope if you are afraid or have little money (Aft).

The Article "Regular Health Care is Struggle for some." talks about how illegal immigrant have stopped going clinics due to fear of being protected. During an interview, a medical assistant says, “they’re afraid of being taken from their families.” confirming that immigrants are willing to sacrifice their health than be deported. Hospitals, instead of clinics, seem to be unaffected but that’s because they get emergency patients instead of voluntary patients. Immigrants have started unrolling from assistance from the government, FIND Food Bank for example. Citizens are saddened that illegal immigrants have become too fearful to even do necessary things to live (Gagliano).

I was in my room setting up everything needed until my mother arrived from work. She would arrive tired, but I wanted to make sure she didn’t have more work to do at home. when 5 pm rolled around, my mother arrived where I proceeded to sit down and asked her questions for my research essay. She eagerly started to answer my questions, but due to how long her answers were, I had to ask her to shorten them down. My mother attended medical school every day for over a year. She enjoyed her experience because she learned something new every day. She didn’t have a car at the time so she had to take the bus early every day to reach class. She would arrive to the bus stop tired because she still had to prepare me and my brother for school.  She said that the experience was difficult due to her not having a car, but since she does have one she is willing to do the experience again.

I began the interview with “Why did you become a nurse?” “I became a nurse because I to understand the meaning of medicine.” She answered. I asked her answer in wider explain in detail for me. “Medicine has been able to help people get better and it interested me how that medicine is able to do that.” She elaborated. My mother is the type of person to be interesting on how a small pill is able to cure headaches or a booster shot healing a fever. This answer didn’t surprise me so I asked her another question.

“What would you say was the hardest part of becoming a nurse?” I asked. “The work was hard and staying for 10 hours a day was also difficult, but that compared nothing to the morning routine I had.” She explained that she would have to wake up a 4 in the morning to help everyone get ready for school. She had no car so she would take the bus and arrive at medical school at 9am. I am really shocked that was what my mother had to do and me being a child didn’t realize that.

We both talked a bit more, more on her work day though, and I began to type everything down. My mother really did want to become a nurse and she did achieve it through extremely hard work and dedication. I don’t feel she would like to experience all the work s e had again, but if she must then she will take the challenged to achieve her dream. I really do fell motivated me to become a phycologist and even makes my body feel ready to take all the work I’m going to get.

It’s understandable that people would feel nurses going to strike is bad. A journey to getting a nursing degree takes a long time and lot of work and to throw away all you worked for it considered tedious. Nurses are important to doctors as assistants and they help deal with less serious patients. Nurses get good wages from around 70,000 or more per year compared to a Walmart worker. People with injuries are left untreated, which can grow into permanent damage if left uncared for. Nurses would get a bad light of them wanting more money than they would for treating sick and injured people (Newkirk).

Nurses need to be seen human too, which means they could also get common sickness like regular people. Their positions as nurses shouldn’t mean they can be ignored and be expected to for the nurses to cure themselves. Too much work is bad and the only way to cure that is time off. If they continue to over work without break then they are most likely to take up drinking alcohol to cope with their aching bodies (“Should nurses be allowed to strike?”).

The reason I chose this topic and issue is because how the issue has affected my personal life and my family. My mother’s work has started to affect how she behaved at home and how she treated my family. Another reason is because I always wondered if nurses were affected by the amount of work. My research mostly came from my mother and articles. The Step by Step process was easy to understand and allowed me to keep an easy organization for all parts of my research essay. The writing process was long to type, but easy to do. I used my time on each section carefully.

Each part had their own challenges needed to be completed. Paraphrases is using your own words, free writes are difficult if you don’t have a general idea of your paper, and interviews might be a time challenge if you and the interviewer might not have good times to talk. My difficult part of the refutation. It was difficult to find anyone willing to fight back the nurses, as I gave good reasons to why they had to have less work due to their health. This paper was easily because of the different sections, so I would use plans like these for future essays. I learned about abstracts and what they were, since my fight thought of abstracts were way off. Essays has become easy since I have entered college due to the amount of easy planning needed to be done, and this essay was probably the best example of use of sections. I have grown in essay skills and hope to show for future essays I type.

“Should nurses be allowed to strike?” debate. http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-nurses-be-allowed-to-strike

Anft, Michael. Hispanic Men often Put Off Medical Care, Bringing Bigger Trouble. NPR, Washington, 2017, Global Newsstream; Nursing & Allied Health Database, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1891273983?accountid=42321.

Gagliano, Katie. "Regular Health Care is Struggle for some." The Desert Sun, Sep 03, 201,           Global Newsstream, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1934693490?accountid=42321.

Newkirk, Barrett. "Missed Visits to Doctors Linked to 'Trump Effect'." The Desert Sun, Apr 18, 2017, Global Newsstream, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1888879010?accountid=42321.

McDonald, Lauren. "YMCA Hosts Resource, Health Fair for Welcome Week." TCA Regional News, Sep 21, 2017, Global Newsstream, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1940824508?accountid=42321.