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Blocked
Lisa I. Iezzoni
PREFACE: Hospitals are a world of their own. These three essays—all written by Narrative Matters veterans—explore the rich and complex challenges of life, death, and fairness in hospitals. Lisa Iezzoni, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, has written scholarly and narrative pieces ("Boundaries," Health Affairs/Narrative Matters, November/ December 1999) about barriers to care encountered by disabled patients. Here she provides a patient’s-eye view of hospital (and medical office) obstacles that she and others in wheelchairs endure. Ray Bingham, at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) National Institute of Nursing Research ("Leaving Nursing," Health Affairs/Narrative Matters, January/February 2002), describes a skirmish between a nurse and a doctor over the care of a premature infant—a nuanced struggle that occurs more often on hospital wards than either profession would readily acknowledge. Victoria Sweet, a practicing physician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco ("Thy Will Be Done," Health Affairs/Narrative Matters, May/June 2007), proposes that there needs to be middle ground between "Full Code" and "Do Not Resuscitate" for hospitalized patients who are capable of enjoying life but for whom efforts at resuscitation will offer nothing. A new medical order, Code Pearl, is her creative answer.
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WHEN WAVED BEFORE THE DEVICE positioned at wheelchair height, my plastic card had magically opened automatic doors in some of Harvard Medical School’s century-old quadrangle buildings. Six months ago, my card stopped working. This left me, on my occasional visits, to tug at massive doors from my scooter-type wheelchair until help arrived. With finally a few moments to replace the card, I went in search of the security office located in another early-twentieth-century building. But the security office wasn’t wheelchair accessible—the building’s lone elevator didn’t service that particular corridor. So I waited outside on the sidewalk at the base . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Breaking Down Barriers—And Keeping Them Down
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