Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9501070008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-22 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I read this story several times to assure that I didn't misinterpret any part. I've been employed in the medical field all my working years. I love the medical field. I have great respect for anyone choosing to work within it, and it's seldom easy. Unlike many other professions, you can't leave it at 5 p.m.
I, too, am concerned about health-care changes we're facing. I do understand the fear and anxiety that go along with not knowing what may happen or if you will have a job the next day. I can and do sympathize with the nurse's concerns expressed anonymously. But I'd very much like the opportunity to respond as a Carilion Health System employee.
I've read too often in recently printed articles how bad health-care providers are treated by their employers. No one bothers to print the benefits and compassion demonstrated so often by Carilion for its employees.
In the story, the nurse indicated she was completely dedicated to nursing. She stated that "she loved nursing" and the frustration came for her in seeing the hospital look at the bottom line, "which is not where the nurses or doctors are looking.'' Sorry, I don't buy that. If you've not had the opportunity to spend time in the real world of medicine, you may not realize that not everyone is in it for the good of humanity. This includes nursing.
I've worked for Carilion for five years and have found my employer to be dedicated to providing quality health care, sparing no expense. I've never seen the Carilion system put money of any amount above their patients' or employees' welfare, and I'm in a position to know.
It truly amazes me sometimes how we (the employees) feel our employers owe us. Did we not accept a position with them? Did we not agree to perform a job when hired? They owe us nothing, except what we agreed to at the time hired. I don't believe any health-care provider would promise a job would be eternal and the employee would never have to do anything they didn't feel like doing.
To be an adult and not have realized by this time that shooting the messenger of change solves nothing, leaves a person open to many disappointments to come.
ALICE S. MILLER
Quality Management Department Assistant and Utilization Review Coordinator
Franklin Memorial Hospital
ROCKY MOUNT
Something about a birth
SCHOOLS can have Christmas trees this time of the year. They can even have Santa scenes, including the reindeer; and decorations can be all glittery with artificial snow. But a star of Bethlehem or Nativity scene? No!
Christmas parties and dinners have eateries booked to the brim. You're invited to come, but it isn't politically correct to mention ``him.'' No schools or government buildings can have any religious display.
Christmas holiday? Whose birth are we commemorating anyway?
MABEL SWANSON BLUE RIDGE
Heavenly Jeffrey Dahmer
I'M WEARY of all the gloating concerning the demise of Jeffrey Dahmer. Doesn't anyone understand that he went to heaven?
Dahmer professed faith in Jesus Christ as the satisfaction of the justice of God for his sins. Christ's sacrifice, death, burial and resurrection is totally sufficient to cover men's sins for all time, once and for all. When anyone appropriates God's provision, they're born again by the spirit of God into the family of God - he becomes their father and they become his child. All sins committed are blotted out and forgotten as a result of this catharsis.
Dahmer did what many so-called good persons will never do, to their own detriment. He trusted in Christ and received the benefit package that goes with doing so, as did Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz.
The sweet little old grandmother who has spent her life living apart from Christ will share the same fate as Adolf Hitler. People will go to hell, not for what they've done in their life, but for rejecting God's provision for their own sins.
God cannot compromise his essence in blessing, saving, and taking to heaven those not qualified. Therefore, he calls everyone to repent and appropriate his provision for their own sins.
ORIN L. MOSES III
ROANOKE
Deciding who gets to survive
THE SENTENCING of Paul Hill to death (Dec. 7 Associated Press news story, ``Abortion foe gets the chair'') firmly sets abortion as the answer to the problem of survival.
We've been conditioned to believe that only the fittest will survive, or outlive the competition. Our laws reflect this, our courts enforce it, and millions have died because of it.
What if abortion became the problem to the answer? If there were a difference between life and survival, could we see it?
Jack London wrote a lot about survival, but he didn't. He died when he was 40, empty of any understanding of life. He was willing to accept the harshness of his own judgment, until all his choices were beyond his ability to make them.
Are we so willing to ask for something we're so unwilling to give?
MARSHALL TACKETT
BUCHANAN
by CNB