Woman left to die on hospital floor

Ya I saw the video from the hospital on CNN and I just couldn't believe it when she had feel a security officer walked into the waiting room and just looked at her and didnt do nothing then he just leaves like nothing even happened

People do this (except they are acting) in the ER all the time so they can get in before the others.

Just like in a major city, we can use Detroit, every call that comes into 911 there is a gun involved when in fact there isnt. The caller knows it will get a priority response. Group of kids hanging out at a crackhouse, if you call and say they are hanging out and being loud it will take hours for response...mention GUN and it will be minutes.

It is that whole cry wolf thing.....but she wasn't faking.

Well the other problem is the 911 operators don't do anything anyway.

The other problem is, the health care system in general is corrupt.

I lost my father to a corrupt system. It's everywhere, not just the U.S.

Unfortunately, the U.S. protects doctors from any wrongdoing...so they're like the police - think that they're invincible and untouchable.

The emergency rooms are a joke. They should make all non-critical care people go to a different office entirely.
People bleeding on the floor should always take precedence over some Low income piece of trash that has the sniffles, looking for his next medicine "Fix"

Psychiatric care in the UK is the same standard as it was 100 years ago. Basically, ignore it if you can, if you can't, then hide the mentalists away, and let them drool and play with themselves in a corner.

Yes, so that was a flippant statement, but I challenge anyone to disprove it. I have had an apalling experience with UK mental health care with my best friend. He's been denied counselling because 'we only have female counsellors, and they don't like talking to men who cut themselves' , he handed himself into a place voluntarily, only for me to have to go down to the hospital with the police to get him out, because they drugged him against his will, and then I had to go and speak to his Doctor, and tell them how they should actually try and help him, instead of the sick-note-bastards that were taking up all of the surgerys time.

It's not the health professionals help, I'm sure. It's just that people don't understand how the brain-chemistry works - still - and people who cut \ talk to themselves \ see things are basically put into the bucket of 'alchoholic, child-abused, dole-skiving gimps'.

*starts to calm down*

Well, he moved to America now, and is 'mostly' settled over there - but he's good to be out the way of the UK mental healthcare lot. I'm just not looking forward to my old age when I start drooling. If I'm lucky, they'll euthanise me and use me for biofuel, rather than let me wander on the street with my cock hanging out...

My first post in this thread was very justified and it was not a swipe at you. You then chose to take an unjustified swipe at me.

And in that thread I did not mention your apparently sub-conscious American bashing.

It's tragic and unconscionable, but what do you expect from a medical tradition that is now more concerned about your wallet biopsy than the results from your liver or prostate biopsy?

There was a time when those in the USA who had serious mental illnesses or were "intellectually challenged" were cared for (albeit, minimally) by a combination of State and Federal Government funding. Then the Great Communicator won the Presidency, and within two years of Reagan as Chief of Naps, the social programs (social nets) that existed to care for such individuals were disassembled by Republican-led Congress and no longer funded. In 2003 there were several months of news about how many more "homeless" people were on the streets of NYC. These were folks who previously were warehoused in mental institutions, but at least they were cared for and received medication. No longer. The country, as a whole, just acclimatized to the situation. The situation has continued to worsen since then. In the early 1980's the Neocons who pushed for repealing so many social programs put in place during FDR's, Trumans', Eisenhowers', LBJ's and even Nixon's Presidency the promise by the that American church groups would pick up the slack, taking the newly disenfranchised mentally challenged into their Christian folds where they would be humanely cared for. Sadly, it never happened.

However, a bunch of us commie pinko "liberals" started donating money and volunteering at homeless shelters all over the USA. However, we could barely put a dent in the new problem created by the less charitable Republican agenda. And so it still goes.

During the first two decades of my life, (1950 -1970), individuals who suffered serious mental illness (schizophrenia, for example) were cared for part-time at home and part-time in State-run institutions. In many cases the State-run institutions were even more inhuman than just leaving the mentally ill to fend for them selves on the streets. Regardless, there was care available and it was slowly improving. Now, these same folks are just left to find their own heat vent on a side walk. In the western States, it's a game of Chess where the police in Tuscon and Phoenix buy them one-way bus tickets to Las Vegas. Las Vegas buys them one-way bus tickets Salt Lake City in the spring. Salt Lake Insists they don't buy any bus tickets, but just go downtown to the Greyline Bus Station and check out how many homeless have one-way tickets to Boise, Portland, and Seattle. Somebody bought those tickets for them. Those unlucky to get stranded along Interstate 80 from Wendover to Reno, Nevada, most often end up county jail, until they are evaluated as mentally ill/homeless. Some outreach groups patrol the county jails and try to help. More often than not, once the Sherriff's Office determines there is no way they will be able to continue to fund the housing of a homeless, mentally ill hitch hiker, they are magically transported to Sacramento, or at least to the Western Slope of the Sierras. Those closer to the Ewetaw State Line are frequently seen sweltering int 100+ degree heat trying to get across the Salt Flats.

Of course, there are many on this site who are going to deny any of this is true. However, I'll bet large sums of devalued US Dollars that they've never helped anyone less fortunate than them selves in their entire lives beyond, "Oh, but I give at Church. Sniff, sniff."

Have a special day.

You still fail to see the irony in your comment.

Your comment was unjustified in the context of the story posted, something remarked on by another poster. Further, you not only cited a portion of my post, but specifically bolded a section of it. Now, with that in mind, do you want to try 'it wasn't aimed at you' again?

You do tend to create a large(ish) number of thread, often about trivial issues - though less than you did. Obviously that's IMO, but it's something that has been been commented on by others. While it wasn't meant to be taken hatefully I stand by the essence of the statement.

Yawn, read on did we ... all I can say is boy did you both misread that one. Are we done with this now, I know I am?

Me neither. Anytime a patient is admitted on a psychiatric basis doctors seem to automatically assume that whatever they are manifesting is either attention-seeking, acting out, or having a purely psychological event. I've been to the ER more than once with psych patients having potentially very serious reactions to their medications and the doctors just shrugged their shoulders and sent them on their way.

I always said that in an ER, the only way you get attention is of you're dying. Apparently even this isn't the case.

I don't care how many people fake and how overworked the staff is, there should be someone to at least check on patients like this. It doesn't take an MD or a nurse to take vital signs.

I don't agree with this. My friends who are doctors pay out the nose for malpractice insurance because we are, as a society, so litigious when it comes to healthcare. With that said, I've also experienced problems with doctors while caring for my mother and grandmother, and they mostly fell into the communication category. The biggest problem is that doctors are no longer allowed to be doctors anymore-- the bloated health insurance industry and hospital bureaucracy take way more time and energy than they ever should.

This is definitely true. There should be some sort of triage for this as well as walk-in clinics for people who need not-so-urgent care.

To the OP: I wouldn't turn this into an America-bashing topic, though.

There have been countless experiments and studies showing the social cruelty and numbness of urban people in the West, that is, not only in the U.S.

For example, I vividly remember a video shown to us in our course on social psychology.

-The experiment showed an unshaved man wearing rather shabby clothes, having a serious problem, collapsing on the sidewalk of a very busy street. Hundreds of people just walked by. Occasionally someone turned and looked at him. But that was it. The vast majority didn't even do that.

-Then the same was replicated, but the cleanly shaved man now wore a suit and a tie. In this scenario, all the people walking by were ready to help instantly.

The experiment obviously showed that social status is extremely important, and can be life-saving. Moreover, the anonymity of public places in urban environments sorta "legitimizes" the destruction of the most basic social ties; it allows people to escape the most basic of humane responsibilities. It entirely redefines who's important and who's not.


Other well known experiments, testing group behavior, show that in groups people are extremely passive. You know, typical experiments with someone supposedly drowning: people alert each other, but nobody acts. The cliches get confirmed all the time.


I think the woman in the hospital was the victim of both these things: subconscious discrimination on the basis of her lack of high status (she's black and wore shabby clothes); and group paralysis.

This is probably a universal type of madness, found wherever people get numbed down by the a-social reality of urban life.

Sigh ... where's a 'villagers brandishing pitchforks and torches' emoticon when you need one.

Okay, my English is not well enough to understand your meaning.

But there are countless factors, evidences or events with which to build a credible case of anti-Americanism. Just not this one.

The superior Europeans do also let people die on the streets, only not that often or that brutally. For example, when a homeless person is found living in a carton box over here, the social services bring him to hospital, treat him, clothe him, offer him an appartment, school him and find him a decent job. That would never happen in the U.S.

But the mechanism of social cowardice is the same in the US and the EU. Only, in superior Europe, this cowardice has been counter-acted by all kinds of social mechanisms that provide solidarity and security.

So yes, Europeans are vastly superior on all fronts. But we are only human, you know. We are not yet another species. We still have brains that vaguely resemble the brains of these primitive Americans.

I'll translate:

Where is the cute little emoticon (smilies) that I can use that shows the scene from the Frankenstein movie where the villagers are chasing the monster with torches.

So someone with a low income is just a drug addict looking for a fix? Nice. We're talking about an ER here, not the free clinic. That's where people go to fake for a fix.
Besides, symptoms far more serious than external bleeding won't always be as readily apparent as bleeding. That's why people typically get seen in order by arrival (or completed paperwork) rather than relative seriousness of symptoms.

That's more a mark against our government than our people. (Yes, I know we elect most of them, but nobody ever talks about what they're going to do for the homeless.) Many cities have shelters that offer a bed for the night and a free breakfast in the morning, all on a first come first serve basis. It's not much, but with poor tax spending more people are forced to penny-pinch, and that limits our options.

Here in My city here in North Queensland our healthcare is free but it is far from perfect.
Our city does not have a mental health facility.
The mentally ill when they have an episode have to be taken into custody by the the police (*2).
The patient is then kept in a holding cell.
The local government hopsital is contacted and the two police officers muscle the patient into a police car(*1) and take them to the emergency room where they are held down by the police officers, and an orderly(*1) while a doctor(*1) can inject them with a sedative with out being punched, kicked or bitten.
An Ambulance is then called because the nearest mental health facility is in the next town-over 1 1/2 hours drive away.
There are (*2) paramedics in the amublance and the sedated patient is loaded in to the Amulance but must be accompanied by a trained trauma nurse(*1).
She is to reinject the patient if he becomes fully lucid on the trip.

So lets do the math here.
This one mentally ill person has tied up the following resourses-
2 police officers
1 holding cell
1 police car
1 orderly
1 doctor
and
I ambulance, 2 paramedics, 1 trauma nurse and a aumublance for 4 hours for the trip up to the facility, administration of the patient into the facility and the trip back to town.

I in no way blame the ill person because the system is imperfect.