Problem:
My name is Parker Meeks and I hope to work in the field of cosmetic nursing or plastic surgery. I believe that race played a role in the events at Memorial Medical Center because healthcare professionals are not immune to implicit biases, both conscious and unconscious. Furthermore, the corporations and CEOs running private hospitals, like Memorial Medical Center was at the time of Hurricane Katrina, are incentivized by making the biggest profit possible rather than providing equal, nondiscriminatory care to patients. This creates barriers for receiving care for many people of color, who experience poverty at higher rates due to a variety of systemic and historically significant issues. Other vulnerable populations, such as the LGBT community and the elderly, are also at risk for limited access to the healthcare system. For example, when describing Dr. Baltz's commitment to medicine's professional ethics, Fink (2013) describes his interaction with a group of doctors who believed that LifeCare was spending too much on its elderly patients (p. 129). With this in mind, in addition to Memorial's historical hesitancy to accept integration and Medicare patients (Fink, 2013, p. 99), it is likely that race was a factor when deciding who was to be evacuated