Worker-Owned Healthcare
Reckoning with our modern-day COLONIAL "healthcare" system, and the solution to save us from it
As a pediatric intensive care unit RN (over the last 7.5 years), union representative, nurse advocate, bargaining team member, nurse entrepreneur, and woman of color, I spent decades of my life battling depression, anxiety, an ADHD diagnosis, and burnout shortly after becoming a nurse in 2014
I was told by psychiatrists and therapists (namely white men and women) that I would need medications my whole life as a result of the “chemical imbalances” in my body and that I would just need to accept it. This never sat well with me and I intuitively knew that this could not possibly be the only answer. Something felt off and it was not as a results of any chemical imbalance within me. In fact, we now have evidence that debunks this longstanding over-simplified approach to depression resulting from a chemical imbalance.
After beginning to notice that my depressive and anxious tendencies or “symptoms” remained (despite being on pharmaceuticals and in western style talk therapy), I started to really question and contemplate the treatment I was receiving and whom I was receiving it from. In fact, in my last appointment with my psychiatrist at the time, our session evolved into a conversation about his own burnout and frustrations with his employer, Kaiser Healthcare, even sharing his desire to quit. I left that day laughing at the irony of the situation - my appointment turned into a therapy session for my therapist, who was equally burnt out and confiding in me, his patient. Yet there he was, getting paid a lot of money to see patients and “guide” their journey to health and mental stability.
It was at this time in my life where I came to the realization that most of my fellow colleagues (physicians and nurses specifically) were also sick and heavily medicated. Struggling with autoimmune disorders, GI issues, combined with major depression and anxiety. It was also interesting to observe the normalization of illness among us all, the ones caring for the community - quite the paradox isn’t it? I became determined to get off the meds and was also tired of experiencing such extreme side effects. The overall sense of numbness in my life and relationships had became unbearable. Over a period of 6 months, I dove deep into so-called “alternative” modalities of healing like: yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, and breath-work, each containing strong scientific evidence backing their potent efficacy. I completely changed the food I ate, stopped consuming alcohol, and I carefully titrated myself off of all the meds (antidepressants, benzos, ADHD meds) that I had been dependent on for almost a decade. I took my life back.
I acknowledge the need for medications in times of crisis AND believe we must also recognize the massive failures of our current methods and approaches to physical and mental health disturbances. The two cannot be separated and we now have evidence to prove what ancient indigenous cultures have well understood for thousands of years, yet we manage care of the human body, mind, and spirit as if each were mutually exclusive.
Modern medical strategies not only reduce mental illness down to chemical imbalance, they also ignore the many systems of injustice that have resulted in the generational trauma and collective suffering disproportionately plaguing our communities of color. Let us recall the American healthcare system’s legacy, a history rooted in racism that has shaped US healthcare and remains chillingly palpable both inside and out of hospital and clinic walls today.
I am curious about how we can begin to shift attention away from the individual and refocus it onto the systems in which we are all part of and how those systems impact our daily life and in turn, our mental state. From access to real food, clean water, affordable housing, safe schools, life-saving medications, supportive community, meaningful and purpose-driven work - what are the systems in place that dictate and influence our ability to meet these basic needs? How much control do we have (as individuals) on these systems? If any of these basic needs are not met, does it impact our mental health? Are we all on a level playing field to act in sovereignty when we want to effect change on any of these systems?
~ The Urgency Today ~
Depression and suicide remain an emergency within the nursing community and also among physicians who have the highest rate of suicide of any professional group (pre-COVID). I remember learning to horrific news of a nurse who worked in my former hospital’s emergency department who took her life after in the Fall of 2020. In late April 2022, an ED nurse shot himself on shift at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara California.
In addition to the obvious concern related to the mental health of our nursing and physician workforce, this raises another huge red flag around the quality of care and attention patients and the community receive when they arrive in our hospitals and clinics.
How is it that physically and mentally ill individuals are able to “effectively” care for our sick community? How does one serve others benevolently and remain in right integrity if they themselves are suffering? Physicians take an oath vowing to “do no harm” yet how can one be expected to uphold their ethics and values within a system crushing our will to live? Moral injury is so real my friends - many of are very familiar with the devastation it has on the psyche and spirit. Shouldn’t those of us entrusted to heal and tend to the wounds of others be thriving and in optimal physical, mental and emotional states ourselves?
Has our reductive Western training of human health hindered our ability to zoom out and look at the systems that may be leading us to burnout and suicide? Hospitals, their administrators and the media continue to place blame and onus on individuals to deal with personal stressors and encourage staff to seek the standard recommendation of therapy and maybe a visit to the psychiatrist. But is this working for people anymore? Was it ever working?Why do we continue to see record levels of burnout and suicide? Is it possible that our “healthcare” system, the same one that knowingly places profits over the health of its staff AND patients, is causing the very problem it then later creates a “remedy” for? A remedy that is clearly only serving one purpose, to appear it is acting in good faith when in reality, it can only serve its shareholders — evidenced by the egregious amounts of money shareholders, CEOs and hospital administrators have made over the last 2 years, while we (rank and file workers) grapple with the devastating mental health crisis of today.
~ A New Paradigm ~
The answer and solution to me is simple, a worker-owned cooperative healthcare system.
It has been done all over the world and can have many different configurations. In the Netherlands, nurses have revolutionized home health through empowering and giving autonomy to frontline workers themselves. This model has demonstrated improved patient outcomes and increased job satisfaction among providers.
Worker-owned cooperatives are also paving the way in mental health services here in the states.
Amidst a system that is inherently colonial, capitalistic, extractive, oppressive and exploitative by nature like that of our current “healthcare”, why are we continuing to expend energy attempting to “fix” it? Instead, can we imagine and step into action to build an entirely new one? A system that works for us AND those it sets out to serve. One that supports the workers themselves because it is truly democratic in nature.
Our time is now.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
―Buckminster Fuller
So much yes to this sister! So proud of you! You are the type of leader we need, and thank you for sharing your time, energy, and wisdom. Sending you love!