Through Other Eyes: A nursing novella about diversity by Vega Amy

Author:Vega, Amy [Vega, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pritchett & Hull Associates, Inc.
Published: 2014-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

After the break, the nurses took their seats and resumed their discussion with Dagmar.

“Did any of you look at the other responses on the wall during break?”

Each of them nodded.

“Do you have any new thoughts?” Dagmar asked.

“Some of those are pretty offensive,” Donna said.

“Several of them could be perceived as offensive, yes,” Dagmar said. “So I have to commend the people who wrote them down. I think that doing an exercise like this one really puts the pressure on us to be careful. Letting down our guard, and sharing what’s really going on in our minds can be a dangerous thing to do. We’ve probably been very afraid of offending each other, but this doesn’t work unless we do look at the sincerest of our thoughts that come to mind. We have to be honest with ourselves. When we left off before break, I asked each of you to think about the things that were written down on the adhesive notes and mounted all over the room. So let’s talk about all of these first thoughts that came to mind. Where do you think they came from?”

The nurses glanced around them. The walls of the room had been blanketed haphazardly with yellow sticky notes from top to bottom.

“From our own experiences with other people that we’ve met who fit that description, like you pointed out earlier,” Haylie said. “People generalize. Maybe someone else met a Jewish person who was stingy, and now they think all Jews are stingy.”

“Sometimes it comes from things that we’ve simply heard about that particular group of people,” said Brad. “Or things that we’ve seen on TV or in movies. When I was younger, I used to watch old westerns with my Dad. For the longest time, I thought that’s what Indians were – people that wore feathered headdresses and loincloths, rode bareback on horses, and lived in teepees. And I guess that dozens of years ago, there were Indians that did. American Indians, anyway. But Prateeka is Indian as well, and she doesn’t fit any of those images. She’s not even from the same continent. I bet her ancestors had a very different way of life than what I saw on old Westerns.”

“Indeed,” Prateeka nodded.

“Exactly,” Dagmar said. “You’re talking about stereotypes. A stereotype is an oversimplified characterization of a person or a group of people. Just like you said, Brad – all Indians wear feathered headdresses and live in teepees, when clearly they do not.”

Dagmar raised a finger in the air and pointed at the index card for Jews. “I have a story for all of you, if you don’t mind me sharing,” she said. Looking around the group, she quickly discerned that there would be no protest.

“Before I worked here at Dogwood,” Dagmar began, “I was a critical care nurse at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, which is a very ethnically diverse area. There’s a large population of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn, and from time to time, we would have a Hasidic patient in our critical care unit.

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