utopia 2023 or another president

Health Care

Amidst covid pandemic this guy appeared seemingly out of nowhere and he seemed to understand. When asked about the pandemic, his answers were calm, well informed and precise.

Work in the hospital, like everywhere in the country was hell and big part of the populace refused to consider, even less to understand. We were exhausted, deeply hurt, desperate. We felt left alone, disrespected, overcharged. So I reached out to this guy via his website, asked if he might meet with us. Unexpectedly it was quite easy to reach him and get an appointment.

He insisted to work with us for one shift and then talk. He said, he needs to work with us to better understand our situation, our questions and complaints. And surprisingly, though he wasn't trained as a professional nurse, he knew enough to assist and support us.

After the shift, we organized a video conference to make as many colleagues as possible participate. He asked us a lot of questions about our working conditions and workload before and during the pandemic, about physical and mental health, solidarity and breaking points. He asked, if and how our bosses and employers supported us. He asked about qualification and training and what should change to make things easier. He asked about money and living conditions, what's missing, what we would prefer to have or to get rid of. He asked about our dreams, hopes and fears when we started working in this profession and our dreams, hopes and fears now, both for ourselves and for our profession. And he listened to us carefully every time. He asked, how many of us did leave the job and how many are considering doing so. He asked what needs to happen to stop the trend.

Then he carefully lined out what the government realistically can deliver and what no government might be able to achieve. "Of course" , he said: "nurses don't grow on trees. Training is time consuming. So we have only limited possibilities to improve this part of the equation. There are countries with a big and very young population that train more nurses than might find a job in the country itself. This gives some relief. We can initiate and foster partnerships, so that more nurses can be educated there and more might come to us. We can improve access to training and attractivity of the profession, but for everything else, we actually need to recalibrate processes, improve the organization of hospitals and health institutions."

He suggested to create a nursing council on a local, regional, state and federal level to foster exchange between professionals and Institutions like CDC or parts of the administration. "So we can establish an ongoing dialogue between professionals and administration about all sorts of regulations.", he said. This suggestion had much resonance with us.

"We might also create some relief, just offering the hospitals or municipalities a federal program for affordable housing, energy, child care, mobility etc. This doesn't reduce the workload, but it might reduce some other pressure and make life easier.", he suggested.

"You mean, I could live in a housing area, where I pay low rent, have cheap reliable energy, can find child care, food etc next door and can easily commute to work?", a colleague asked. "Yes", our guest smiled: "It's nowadays no problem to create buildings which produce more energy on site than everyone inside might need. It's no rocket science. All technology required is available, well established, affordable and working reliably. I live in such a building for quite a while, together with some other families. We always produce more energy than we all together can use - and much cheaper than any company could deliver.

It's not difficult to collect rainwater and process it into drinking water and technical water, both by simple natural and technical means. It's not difficult to recycle wastewater. It's also not difficult to plan an urban or suburban area where you can find everything you basically need within a 10 minutes walk. That's also no rocket science. It's an established concept. It should also be not that difficult to retrofit existing buildings or urban areas. I will ask the engineers within my team."