NP Joins the National Health Care Debate
Follow nurse practitioner Lois Wessel's lead and make national policy briefings your second job. Wessel wrote a
touching and informative article for Tuesday's Washington Post, explaining her position at a mobile health clinic in Silver Spring, Md., and the barriers to care the U.S. health system throws up before her mostly immigrant patients.
Here's how the article opens:
A 42-year-old political refugee from Sierra Leone, trained as a chemist in France, recently showed up -- desperate -- at the mobile health clinic in Silver Spring where I work as a nurse practitioner. He had lost his health insurance, he explained in fluent English, after his hours had been cut at the university cafeteria where he was working as a cook and dishwasher. By the time I saw him, he had been without his diabetes medication for several months, his blood sugar was dangerously high and he was suffering from kidney damage. I got him back on his drugs, but not before sharing his frustration that his insurer could just drop him.
Stories like this are all too common among the immigrant patients I see at the nonprofit community clinic. All are uninsured. Most have had limited preventive care, and many suffer from chronic diseases including asthma, high blood pressure and diabetes.