Overview
A young Indigenous woman enters the emergency room at a major urban hospital with two young children. She seems quiet and composed, registers the children and herself with the triage nurse and states that they have all been feeling ill and coughing for some time, but are now feeling worse. The nurse asks where they are from and discovers that they live in the city. The nurse then asks what Indigenous group she belongs to and finds out that the young woman is a member of a local First Nation. Their temperatures are taken and are slightly elevated and the nurse notes that one of the children, a boy, has a black eye. She asks the mother whether they would like the services on an Indigenous counsellor, but the mother refuses and states that her son fell off the equipment at the playground. The nurse notes on their file. A possible case of child abuse and assesses the family as otherwise low priority and send them to the waiting room to wait to be seen.
The family remains in the waiting room for 6 more hours, during which their coughing becomes worse. After 6 hours, the family is seen by a physician, who diagnoses turbuculosis (TB). Over 100 patients passed through the waiting room have to be screen, as well as the staff in the emergency room.
The little boy’s eye injury was caused by falling off a schoolyard playground while visiting his father’s family at a remote northern community, where TB is endemic.
Guiding questions/prompts:
- What resources from class could you apply to understanding this situation?
- Identify the Indigenous disparities in health in this case study.
- Identifying these gaps, how would you overcome them and improve this situation?