When Healthcare is Needed: Violence has Strained Relations and Law Enforcement is Involved

In our society, after many bitter wars ended e.g. the Civil War, the Cold War and apartheid in South Africa, we start to see peace building efforts. Often these peace building efforts include conversation between the two opposing forces. The strategy building begins; often it is based on experiential knowledge and not necessarily any academics of evidenced based research. Central to the issue here of conversations on race is a Registered Nurse along with a group of health care providers in Utah partnered with its Police Department agreeing with maybe the consensus of others in the rest of the world, that conversations on race and race relations maybe should take place. Or, perhaps we could borrow from Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, who took a stand on racial tensions and breakdown of communication between law enforcement and the minority communities, "If this is a dialogue that's going to begin at AT&T, I feel like it probably ought to start with me” (Holland 2016).

 In today’s society, fraught with racial tensions and continued breakdown of communication between law enforcement and minority communities there has to be concern for cause and effect. In the wake of what certainly appears to be a quickening of racial tensions due to some recent events it could be asked ‘…how to mitigate or what is to be done’. Navigating uncomfortable spaces and conversations can bring discomfort. Human nature sends the spirit aflight as discomfort in social settings arise because this discomfort might be misinformation or lack of information which require 'brain checking' prior to initiating patient care. Too, biases are a reality. Health care providers are not immune to bias. In essence, humans will typically not indulge themselves in uncomfortable spaces. As health care providers, there often is not this luxury. The patient's needs will force the health care provider to immerse emotion into the discomfort as a search for some means of either chemical or emotional relief is a top priority for patient care. The health care provider champions open communication and will require a variety of skills in the midst of law enforcement peace keeping and possibly patient injury under suspected offenses. Adding to this, there can be the need to quell negative community input. These and more conversational tools will be expolored.