Jeff Wyskiewicz
School of Nursing, University of New England
NSG 442: Integrating Experience III
Professor Bullock
November 14, 2024
Throughout this course we have learned and studied about various vulnerable populations that included Renal and dialysis patients and LGBTQA+. But the population that I wanted to focus on for this paper was the population living with disabilities and more specifically base this paper off the CripTonight presentation we had in class. This was a very powerful and meaningful presentation brought to us by CripTonight. The two main speakers were both living disabilities and they really did a good job of explaining their lives through their shoes. They allowed me to realize just how tough their lives can be based on how they are treated with their disability. It was very eye opening to learn directly from these two speakers just how mistreated they are just because of their disability and are not even looked at sometimes as being a real person. It was also very shocking for me to learn that people with disabilities tend to receive healthcare based on their individual diagnosis rather than their actual disability. For example, one of the speakers in the CripTonight presentation had lost an eye due to glaucoma and was now blind, but he was only treated on the fact that he had glaucoma and had been provided no treatment or care to help with his disability and that was being blind. Another barrier that I had learned from this presentation was the fact that transportation is a big issue with people who require a certain item to be transported such as a mechanical chair. It is very hard for this population to be able to transport that item because buses and trains may not have the ability to transport that item while the person travels. So, this population is forced to find other means of transportation such as renting a large vehicle so that it may hold their chair or whatever it is they may need, which can be very costly to the population.
People with disabilities also face challenges with providers that may advance or deny certain health promoting interventions solely based on insurance companies and whether it is financially a good idea to perform a surgery or whatever it may be. This is very contraindicated to the person because the providers are not looking out for what may be the best thing for their patient, which should be their number one priority, rather, they are making decisions based on insurance issues. People with multiple healthcare providers may also face issues when it comes to communication. Each healthcare provider may not communicate with one another about what each provider is telling the patient on what to do which can be very taxing on the patient because each provider may be telling them a different suggestion or may be even contradicting one another. Some providers have even gone to the extent of admitting that they don’t even want to treat patients with disabilities. In an article from the New York Times, doctors admit that they will do anything to minimize their time with patients who have disabilities. “Seeing patients at a 15-minute clip is absolutely ridiculous,” one doctor said. “To have someone say, ‘Well we’re still going to see those patients with mild to moderate disability in those time frames’ — it’s just unreasonable and it’s unacceptable to me” (Kolata 2). This just goes to show that doctors will go to extreme lengths to minimize their interactions with patients who have disabilities. This is extremely unfair to this population, and it is even denying their right to adequate healthcare, something that all people have but this population seems to be burdened based on their conditions.
In conclusion this vulnerable population faces many obstacles and challenges in all parts of their lives and are always looked on as different solely because of their disability. It is not fair for judgment and mistreatment that this population faces every day because they may not be deemed as “normal”. The CripTonight presentation was a great learning experience as it opened my eyes to what is going on in the real world and just how poorly vulnerable populations are treated, which in this case was people with disabilities.
References
CripTonight – Sam Atwood and Kings Floyd. PORTFRINGE. (2023, June 3). https://portfringe.com/portfolio/criptonight-sam-atwood-and-kings-floyd/
Kolata, G. (2022, October 19). These doctors admit they don’t want patients with disabilities. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/health/doctors-patients-disabilities.html
