Nurse here! This keeps popping into my mind, keeps leaving me drawing a blank. Healthcare is a massive and resource-devouring industry, but is stuffed with people who actually give a shit about the people around them: the industry is a good candidate for improvement, and the people in it are likely to actually embrace those improvements (well, barring the odd salty af mofo who loses their shit at the first signs of change, but that person’s in every industry - they’ll figure it out eventually.)
I work in a run-of-the-mill hospital in the US, which encourages staff to take on system improvement projects, and these are were I see potential - especially for new nurses gunning for promotions.
The problem is what and how. All I can think of are things like recycling programs to tackle medical waste, but (at my facility at least) the waste that isn’t already being recycled is either biohazardous or risks becoming biohazardous (like medication waste is huge, but we can’t save half a vial of unused injection due to the possibility of that being contaminated by the first needle that drew from it).
So, looking for project ideas, both that I can start to implement myself, or to suggest to other staff looking to polish their resume. Smaller scale stuff is great for newer nurses; big scale stuff I can throw at management and see what sticks.
Let me know if you think of anything! Thanks all!
I’m afraid hospitals are systemically and ideologically incompatible with solar punk.
getting together with other medics and starting neighborhood clinics however would be much easier than attempting reform from the inside.
also stuff like DIY medicine, it would help me greatly as a trans person if medics stopped policing medical knowledge and taught us their skills instead. the idea that medicine can only be safe if practiced with a license is one that’s getting countless trans people killed because we’re denied the autonomy to save ourselves. the major example is DIY estrogen being safe but most doctors would tell me succumbing to a dysphoria-induced suicide is the healthier option
I agree. Solar punk is about healing the sick world and sick society that’s making us sick so we don’t need health care the same way we do now, using more toxic chemicals to attack the things all the toxic chemicals and hateful attitudes did to us to destroy our mental health and our bodies to make us so sick so frequently.
hey, sounds like you’re coming from a mad pride perspective based on the “toxic chemicals” rhetoric.
as a mad person myself, I don’t believe using unscientific language like that helps us achieve liberation. whether something is toxic depends on dosage, circumstance and context. for example, regardless if estrogen saved my life, administering it to a trans man in the same dosage I use would probably kill him. can you see how me calling a certain medicine toxic because it killed someone even would be taking things out of context?
chemicals are value-neutral, and making this association between something being chemical and something being harmful and “artificial” can easily lead to ableist policy like MAHA.
thank you for reading thus far and hopefully this is not taken as an attack on you ❤️
I appreciate your clarification, I have no idea what “mad pride” or “mad person” means if that is some kind of acronym or has some meaning other than “angry”, I have no particular organized agenda besides being “mad” in the sense of “angry at the state of the world” and while I might have been a bit loose and uninformed with terminology but I specifically had in mind chemotherapy where toxic chemicals are used to kill the rapidly-growing cancer cells faster than they kill the not-so-fast growing healthy cells.
Hopefully that clears things up although it probably just makes it more confusing. I have no idea. I’m just shouting aimlessly into the void most days. Sorry.
The open source insulin project comes to mind. It’s be nice if there were more projects like that.
I think in existing hospitals the biggest potential for small Solarpunk efforts is around visitors (family members etc.). Another topic could be food preparation for patients.
the most visible example of solarpunk praxis I’m seeing is visitors wearing respirators to keep their loved ones safe from COVID and also the other patients. people forget that being hospitalized is an immunocompromising condition to be in.
@Murse open source medical devices are a huge step, lowering cost and spreading access. OpenFlexure is a great example.
There will be a conference in Bulgaria this year about the future of medicine from a sociological perspective, I know some open medicine people will be there!
My mom works in a care home for seniors and one thing she’s done is asked residents about their entertainment needs and tried to bring in book/magazines that they like to stock the rec room. Probably not super useful at a regular hospital with more temporary stays.
In my area someone also organizes community care days for our unhoused populations. These consist in recruiting a bunch of local people willing to share their skills (haircuts, vaccines, medical consultation, painting nails, grooming or medical attention for pets, etc). They also rent mobile shower units. Since you can’t just go into the park and practice medicine by yourself the medical staff for these events come through a local non-profit that has done the necessary paperwork for insurance and stuff. These events sometimes draw people who are hesitant to visit the hospital for various reasons but would like to ask about a medical issue they’ve been experiencing.
I’ll try to think of more things. I agree the industry has tons of people who care deeply about other people and who would love to improve conditions (both for patients and workers).
When I was recovering from one surgery, I was kept in a very well maintained ward in the hospital, but it was very sterile and temperature controlled without life to it. I don’t know how you would do it without taking too much space, but it would have been nice to have some greenery to look at as I was pacing up and down the hall per doctor’s orders.
