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Who, let's remember, are not actual medical practitioners themselves
This is an ancillary file for the original
story about Lyme disease or
whatever-the-heck I had, but rather than noise that up with a bunch of
barefoot defense I split it to here.
First, a repeat of my original complaint after an uppity office-manager type
took it upon herself to bully me about my feet and
tried to prevent me from going to the blood lab.
So another use for the gateway's messaging system was to file my official
complaint about that nonsense.
My otherwise pleasant visit today was marred by an unpleasant interaction with
one of your office workers. Many of your staff know that I do not wear shoes,
having no need or desire for them, and any medical practitioner or associate
thereof should understand the health benefits of that. Dr. K... certainly
does, and he and I had an extensive and very favorable conversation about it
on my first visit to him. He grew up frequently barefoot himself in his home
country, so he totally gets it. The receiving nurse and Dr. Costas today were
also cordial and even a bit curious about my lifestyle, especially around
outdoor activities.
However, when it came time to draw blood for lab tests, "Amy" who said she was
a "front-end supervisor" tried to BLOCK my visit to the blood lab that the
doctor had already ordered, only on the basis of my footwear choice. Nobody
in the NSPG has *ever* done that to me, they've always been accepting and
understanding and positive. But Amy just wanted to go on some petty power-trip
based on her own personal prejudice, citing some weak excuse about "safety" and
"needles". For her to express that kind of ignorant attitude and try to make
it a showstopper was nothing more than rude and unprofessional. The
interaction left me feeling upset and shaken.
I would therefore like to file a formal complaint against "Amy" and her
behavior. You do not discriminate against clients based on improbable
theoreticals and outdated mythology. I suggest a visit to various helpful
websites like barefooters.org and outbarefoot.org for a bit of truth and
sanity-check. Finally, someone else came along and overruled her, and sent
me off to the blood lab anyway. The phlebotomist welcomed me and was totally
receptive, aptly saying "I want your arm, not your feet". Neither of us could
find that supposed litter of used needles all over the floors there, and she
even seemed somewhat taken aback that anyone would imply suspicion about
careless disposal procedures.
"Amy" needs to be in some other position and possibly career path, where she
never interacts with the general public at all.
I mean, people show up in emergency rooms fairly often without any footwear,
for a whole variety of valid reasons -- maybe they didn't have time to grab
shoes before leaving, or the circumstances of the incident caused them to
lose their shoes, or they were brought in by ambulance ... any number of
possible factors.
Are they denied needed care on just that basis?
Certainly not; that would be "doing harm" by omission and clearly against
the Hippocratic Oath.
So why were people in an office I had visited without any issues several times
in the past suddenly handing me shit about this?
Simply accomodating me is no "hardship" in the legal sense for them, so it
really is only discriminatory.
But this made them dig deeper, and they turned up something claiming to be
an official policy.
Someone a little higher up the chain responded, at least making a little
effort to be nice about it:
Message from Erin Edwards, sent July 29, 1:25 PM
Hi,
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. I am sorry you felt
this way.
I did connect with our patient safety team who shared our Mass General Brigham
visitor's policy. The policy specifies that footwear must be worn in clinic:
POLICY STATEMENT
1. The Mass General Brigham visitor policy applies to all patient visitors,
including MGB employees who are visiting patients for non-work-related reasons.
2. Expectations of visitors:
a. Visitors must adhere to all applicable policies, including the Mass
General Brigham Patient, Family, Visitor, and Research Participant Code of
Conduct. Note: References to patients should generally be understood by
Mass General Brigham Health Plan workforce to mean members.
b. They must wear appropriate attire including shoes and shirts.
Thank you for sharing those resources. We worry about things like safety and
infection control here. I understand and respect your decision to forgo
footwear in your personal life. As you know, businesses can set their own
dress code so in our setting, we kindly ask you to abide by our policy to
wear footwear when visiting.
We appreciate your understanding,
Erin
Practice Manager
Mass General Brigham Peabody
Unfortunately she is correct about the
visitor policy
which presumably applies to patients as well.
It's ironic that pages like this exist right next to others that go on
about how "Mass General is committed to maintaining the rights, dignity
and well-being of all patients."
I fought back, however, as again I had been to this same practice since
sometime before Covid and my feet had never been an issue before.
Message from [me], sent July 30, 4:35 PM
Nobody ever seemed to worry about this misguided "policy" in ALL of my previous
visits, and in fact seemed curious about how I managed my choices especially in
winter. This is inconsistent on the part of MGB, and is likely to simply chase
me away as a client. Other medical/dental practices I deal with do not impose
any such demands on me, and it is time for MGB to really re-think this nonsense
and come up with something less discriminatory. Also keep in mind that some
people live with medical conditions that essentially *prevent* them from having
anything on their feet due to sensory or other neurodiverse issues, and barring
such patients on that basis would not be permitted by law.
The last medical establishment that pulled this sort of thing on me had to face
a full inquiry from the state licensing board. Do I have to take this to such
next steps? You can easily fix this at your own local level. Again, consult
Dr. K... when he's available again.
For the time being, that's how far it went.
The illogic of it all was still epic.
My first visit had been in the winter with a sea of slush and rock salt
across the parking lot, but no problem for me.
The attending doc and I had a great conversation that day about his African
childhood and how people were commonly barefoot where he grew up.
Having dealt with the licensing board
in the past, I knew that they really
don't handle ethics or infrastructure issues like this so if I did decide to
go through with that, it was a pretty dim prospect.
But perhaps I could appeal directly to my main PCP once he was back in the
country and caught up on messages.
Who knows, it might be worth a discussion with the network's
Civil Rights department
to see if there's any reasonable accomodation they could arrange.
I am acquainted online with people on the autism spectrum who have officially
stated their sensory discomfort from footwear, but as I'm not in a similar
position trying the same rhetoric would be deceptive.
Then again, the "fakeout" shoe-uppers are kind of deceptive too.
I'll figure out what to do whenever the next visit comes around, if ever.
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