Pictures posted by couple on Facebook reveal how patients are treated by some Veterans Affairs hospitals.
A North Carolina Veterans Affairs hospital came under fire after one of the patients posted several pictures on Facebook depicting a staff member humiliating a Vietnam veteran. The patient who snapped the incriminating pictures came in with his wife for a consultation, after he experienced pain in his lower back. The heartbreaking scenes took place last month, at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
The events leading to the public opinion’s outrage regarding how veterans are treated started last month when Stephen McMenamin went to the medical center after experiencing recurring lower back pains.
McMenamin declared this is not the first time he visited the Durham VA Medical Center and that he always received high-quality medical treatment. However, this time he saw the dark side of veteran care services.
The veteran recalls seeing a man complaining of pneumonia-like symptoms and saying that he could not sit straight and that he needed to rest. Concerned about the state of his health, McMenamin offered the vet the reclining chair he was sitting in.
However, a couple of minutes later, a nurse arrived and asked the man about his condition. The veteran told the nurse about his symptoms and that he could not sit straight. Instead of helping the man, the nurse shouted and told him to go and wait for his turn in the medical center’s waiting area.
The Vietnam veteran reluctantly agreed to give up the reclining chair McMenamin offered him and went back to the waiting room. However, after a couple of minutes, the man said that he could no longer take the pain, and collapsed on the floor.
According to McMenamin, who was accompanied by his wife, all this time the nurse kept telling him to wait his turn patiently and to sit on the chair. The man recalls that there was another Vietnam veteran waiting for treatment in the medical center’s waiting room.
Later identified as being Jesse Lee, the man had to wait several hours for a consultation, even though he was in extreme pain. Lee said that the doctors recently amputated his left foot, but he continued to experience pain in that area.
McMenamin could resist snapping a few pictures and sharing them on Facebook, hoping that he will raise awareness concerning how some medical institutions tend to treat the country’s veterans. Due to a privacy issue, McMenamin was forced to blur out the patients’ faces.
Image source: Wikipedia