200 Years
The hospital director reported, "We have worked 200 years to increase the relative middle class in this country, yet we are unable to deal with completely treatable diseases: malnutrition, measles, tuberculosis, gonorrhea and syphilis, premature an d low birth weight babies. We no longer believe that it is God's Will that the poor be poor and the rich be rich. We no longer believe that poorness is a permanent condition and the rich have an unchanging right to have society remain static. We no lon ger rationalize that people are poor because of inadequate genetic constitution: we have learned the influence of social pathology."
"The County Hospital does not turn away any patients. This is reminiscent of the fact that the idea of a hospital originated in England from the alms house in Elizabethan times. But we can't force people to get help at an early stage of a diseas e. They put off examination, wishfully thinking the pain or fever will go away."
He talked about the attitudes of the patients...seven percent of the metropolitan area of the city are on government supported medical care. Their feelings seem to divide into two sets when coming into the hospital. Some feel, why me? When it happens to them, they say that they are nobodies, recipients. Sometimes the acutely ill will give in and cry, or, just the opposite, and they will be stoic. Their families are apprehensive. The individual with a recurrent illness is usually resigned and resent ful. When he visits the clinic, he never says thank you and his indifference takes its toll on the staff. There is no feedback from the patient, no token of appreciation. Somehow the physician who take care of the well-to-do patients are treated with m ore esteem from their colleagues and their patients than those who tend the poor.
"But most of the physicians who have trained in public institutions give service to public hospitals when they finish their own training. County has a very large unsalaried attending staff faculty."
Department of Emergency Medicine
