Health care should be apolitical, but it isn’t [PODCAST]

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes

“COVID-19 is a tragedy that could have easily been prevented if our leaders cared more about the well-being of their citizens instead of economies, stock markets, and their political campaigns. To all those arguing about how the economy is more important, I ask, how will sick and dead people contribute to an economy? How will sick and dead health care workers contribute to our already broken health care system, which is a critical part of any economy?

Before we decide to sacrifice our loved ones for the economy, we must remember that a nation cannot flourish if its citizens are not healthy.”

Rabia Jalal is a physician.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Health care should be apolitical, but it isn’t.”

Did you enjoy today’s episode?

Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out!

Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.

Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.

Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Rabia Jalal. She’s a physician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Health care should be apolitical, but it isn’t.” Rabia, welcome to the show.

Rabia Jalal: Thank you, Dr. Pho, for having me.

Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and your journey to where you are today?

Rabia Jalal: Sure. So I’m a physician by training, but my story is a bit unconventional, as I took a different path within health care. I went to medical school in Pakistan after finishing high school in New York as a teenager, and when I came back, I had a passion for public health. So I pursued a public health degree, and I found myself doing public health research.

Then I went on to work in managed care. I worked in utilization management review, I did psychiatric research, I did HMO customer service, and finally I landed in clinical documentation integrity and quality. Currently I work for a large health care organization at an acute care hospital in Central California. So I basically consider myself a behind-the-scenes physician providing indirect patient care.

Kevin Pho: Let’s talk about your KevinMD article, because I certainly think it’s relevant to the political climate that we’re seeing today. So it’s titled “Health care should be apolitical, but it isn’t.” Now, for those who haven’t read your article, can you walk my audience through it and perhaps share the story of why you decided to write it?

Rabia Jalal: OK, yeah. So the reason why I wrote the article was because we’re basically now about eight months into a pandemic, and there’s just a lot of frustration, I think, from everywhere. That’s basically what made me write the article, because I was looking for a great pandemic response, and I thought we would just end this like other pandemics that have happened before.

Instead, I saw people arguing over masks and COVID being a hoax, and all these conspiracy theories that were coming out of the pandemic, like it was created to bring down governments or is done for political reasons. So that’s why I wrote the article, because health care, I mean, diseases don’t care what political party you belong to. You can be a Democrat, a Republican, an independent, or no party. It’s an equal-opportunity killer. So that’s where my frustration lies.

Kevin Pho: I think the way that we are approaching a pandemic in the United States certainly is different from that of other countries. Now, can you comment on some of the different ways that the response to the pandemic is being politicized?

Rabia Jalal: You see people saying, “OK, masks are, you know, we shouldn’t have to wear a mask. It takes away our freedom.” Physicians, health care workers, I’ve been wearing masks since the beginning of time. I can’t imagine any health care workers saying, “Well, I don’t think I’m going to wear masks, because it takes away my freedom,” or, “It’s a hoax. This whole pandemic is a hoax, so I shouldn’t have to wear one.”

We’re seeing currently, with what’s going on with our upcoming election, it’s being used as a tool, where each side is trying to blame the other for the way the pandemic is being handled. We’re seeing lately what happened with the CDC, where they’re supposedly being told that they’re not supposed to encourage testing, or to slow down testing. We saw it happen earlier with the FDA, where they were told, “OK, you need to come out,” and first they pushed hydroxychloroquine, and now they’re pushing vaccines. So I really feel like we’re really politicizing something that is a health care and a public health disaster.

Kevin Pho: I think a lot of the responsibility, of course, can be placed at the current administration, with the president sometimes wearing masks, sometimes not wearing masks, and especially during the convention, you see audience members not social distancing and not wearing masks. But I’ve read somewhere also that public health messaging is to blame as well, because at first Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, said not to wear masks, and a lot of the public health officials had to change their tune a month or two later. Are public health officials also partially to blame for the discordant messaging that is hampering the response to the pandemic?

Rabia Jalal: I absolutely think so. It’s a brand-new virus that we’ve never dealt with, so there was a lot of confusion, and there was a lot of misunderstanding. But I think eight months into the pandemic, we should at least be able to have a national strategy to tackle this, and masks should be the number one priority. It’s just simple science. I don’t understand why people can’t come out and say, “Just mask up,” or, “Keep social distancing,” or, “Don’t go out into crowds.” We wouldn’t have to have endless lockdowns if that had been done.

Kevin Pho: Now, what are some of the answers here? So how do you convince parts of the country to wear masks? What are some of your solutions?

Rabia Jalal: Well, first of all, I want to say, one of the interesting things I keep seeing is, “Well, it’s freedom.” Yes, everyone has their freedom, but we also have a social duty to other people. It does not take away your freedom if you protect yourself or you protect your loved ones.

Secondly, I keep hearing that you become hypoxemic, and again, there’s no science behind that. Surgeons wear masks for seven, eight hours at a time. I’ve had to wear a mask as a patient and as a physician, and I have never become hypoxemic. There’s so much of this miscommunication and misinformation out there, and we need to tackle that. I think social media certainly plays a role in that, because a lot of people get their information on Facebook, and there’s a lot of misinformation that’s out there.

Kevin Pho: I think also there’s a historic level of distrust when it comes to our public health officials. How can we get some of that trust back? Because in order for our message to resonate, the public needs to trust us, and we’re not at a level of trust where we need to be. So what are some ways where public health officials can regain the public’s trust?

Rabia Jalal: I think the medical community as a whole, especially public health officials, needs to come together and put out one message instead of putting out a new message every day. Like I said, we saw that with the CDC, where they had to take back some of their guidelines, or they keep changing their guidelines. The FDA had to do the same thing. All the health care agencies, public health, and also our physicians and our health care workers, we all need to come together as one unit and let the public know that this is what needs to be done, and the sooner we start doing it, the faster we’re going to get out of this.

Kevin Pho: So the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, specifically said that one of the things that he’s going to implement is a national mask mandate. Can you comment on that, and do you think that something like that will be effective from a messaging standpoint?

Rabia Jalal: OK, that is a tricky one. I agree with the message, but the issue is, again, it’s going to be like, “Oh, now they’re taking away our freedom. How can the government tell us what to do?” So it’s going to be problematic. I really wish that we had put in a national mask mandate until people start understanding that it’s for their own good, and for the good of their health care, for their own relatives, and their loved ones and their friends. I don’t know how it’s really going to work. I mean, we’re seeing it right now, even with lockdowns. People are still violating those rules.

Kevin Pho: All right. We’re talking to Rabia Jalal. She’s a physician, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Health care should be apolitical, but it isn’t.” Now, is there something that you’ve learned over the last eight months of the pandemic, something that you know now that you wish you knew before the pandemic started?

Rabia Jalal: Yeah, I think we’ve only touched on this, but for me, the biggest surprise and eye-opener has been honoring what you call a social contract, or lack of, during this never-ending pandemic. I mean, I never thought people would consider something as simple as wearing a mask, or not being in large crowds, or just staying home to be an infringement on their rights. We’re behaving like we’ve never had a communicable disease outbreak before. That has definitely been an eye-opener for me.

Kevin Pho: Sure. And my final question: Do you have a take-home message that you want to share with the KevinMD audience?

Rabia Jalal: Yes. My take-home message would be: Be kind. Whether you are going out in public or you are interacting with somebody online, just be kind. We’re all going through so many different issues at one time with the pandemic. There’s loss of employment for people, parents are having to deal with children staying home from school, just the social unrest that’s going on, and we have racial strife going on. So just be nice to each other, especially when you’re interacting on a computer. Unless you’re a bot, most people are humans behind a computer, and they have feelings. And also, when you go out in a grocery store or coffee shop, do not be rude to other people if they ask you to wear a mask. That’s basically my take-home message.

Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight. Thanks again for being on the show.

Rabia Jalal: Thank you so much for having me.

Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes