Alberta health minister Fred Horne’s comment
in Thursday’s Edmonton Journal deserves debate on several levels. We applaud Horne
for asking Alberta Health Services — what on God’s green earth were they
thinking, anyway — to review drastic cut backs to home care. Earlier in June
AHS moved to bring multi-national companies to carry out home care duties.
Perhaps the thing that stung the most was how home care clients were not
consulted in the process at all. (I receive home care and I have cerebral
palsy.)
But we cannot uncork the bubbly and do the
happy dance. If you read Horne’s quote near the end of Sarah O’Donnell’s story
that should concern Albertans on home care, and people with disabilities throughout
Alberta.
. “It’s a matter of dignity for patients who
receive home care,” Horne said. With all due respect, how can a person with a
physical disability, living in their own home, paying rent or owning their own
place, be called a “patient?” I don’t get it. We are Albertans, living in the
community, paying taxes, contributing in so many ways — out of the long dark
shadows of instructional care — and we are still called patients. What a sad
and somewhat archaic commentary on how Horne sees us.
I am a patient if I am in the hospital
getting acute care. But not in my own home. I am a resident, a neighbor, and a
member of a community league. I resent being called a patient in my own home.
Should I ask my wife to wear a nurse’s cap now?
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