The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that administrators of the county’s public hospital system have banned workers from reading a newspaper series critical of the system – at least while they are at work. The paper reports that the hospital system blocked internet access to the Star-Telegram.com site.
The newspaper says that three of its reporters spent four months examining the JPS Health Network.
The series, which began last week, opened like this in part one:
“The waiting room reeked. Along a crowded hallway, patients lay in beds, with only a thin curtain for privacy. Nurses readying for a new case in surgery noticed blood, bone and globules of fat on the walls and floor and stuck to wheels of carts.
Chance brought to the hospital teenagers from car wrecks, fathers hurt on the job, police officers injured in the line of duty. Others — the poor — came because they believed they had nowhere else to go.
They were greeted last year at an overburdened emergency department where the staff could be robotic and hardened to patients. Sometimes, inexperienced nurses evaluated the sick and suffering.
Some patients were shuffled to a stifling back room to wait. Medical records, crucial lab results — even patients — got lost. Staff didn’t notice when one Alzheimer’s patient walked home in 100-degree heat. Another patient was dismissed because doctors didn’t get lab results indicating a life-threatening disease.
The trauma center was described as a war zone. Operating rooms as chaotic. In too many places, instruments were broken, rooms dirty, linens threadbare.
Welcome to a hospital flush with cash and rife with problems. Welcome to John Peter Smith Hospital, hub of the Tarrant County Hospital District.
Boosted by tax funding other local hospitals don’t get, JPS has been racking up fat surpluses — nearly $97 million last year alone.
But the cash has not helped a dedicated core of doctors and nurses overcome the system’s callousness, ineptitude and filth. JPS is a hospital that many of its own doctors wouldn’t recommend.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Gab
May 8, 2008 at 10:32 pmOk, this is simply crazy. This is 2008, come on guys, you can’t stop people to access information.
Sorry Gay, but what can we expect now?
Banning workers from reading a newspaper? Is this a US thing or a Texas policy?
Very sad.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like