Asian Americans are very well-represented in the ranks of healthcare workers in the United States, and serving on the front lines of the covid-19 health crisis in America is impacting them particularly. The medical and health media outlet STAT recently ran an article about the heavy toll on the Filipino American community, which provides 4% of America’s nurses.
From the article:
Filipinos are famous for, and justly proud of, their nursing acumen. The history of Filipino nurses in the United States is a long and complicated one, a symbiotic relationship borne of war and colonialism, and as some see it, racism and the exploitation of a critical medical workforce that has often been hesitant, because of cultural norms, to complain about poor workplace conditions. …
Filipino nurses [are] continuing to go unnoticed even as they take on the most dangerous and wrenching tasks in Covid-19 units, like bathing or suctioning intubated patients and comforting and holding those who are dying without family present. …
But many Filipino nurses feel they are treated as expendable even though their large numbers and work ethic, they say, keep the American health care system functioning. Many also complain about “the bamboo ceiling” that until recently kept Filipino nurses out of positions of leadership.
Read more here:
Nursing ranks are filled with Filipino Americans. The pandemic is taking an outsized toll on them
Author: Kevin W. Fogg