Thursday, February 21, 2008

Is the building of Texas Tech El Paso Medical School Rhetoric?

For this upcoming research topic, I had to put my thinking cap on. After the whole incident of Mr. Lozano’s accident and how Thomason took on the challenge of treating him, it got me re-evaluating the whole situation. Thomason does not tend to deny service to anyone regardless of one’s situation. In turn, this has its pros and cons. Then I started thinking about the medical school. Every Friday, the CEO of Thomason, sends out a weekly letter stating the past and future events. As I was reading the past letters I noticed that they all were pushing for the building of a four year medical school. All the letters mention how it will help to boost our economy and the amount of doctors it will bring to the Sun City. Though it all sounds great and I don’t thought we need a school, I don’t recall once being warned of the sacrifices that we might have to make and needless to say the consequences. For example, we are still in the process of recruiting the doctors for this school. Texas Tech is recruiting from all over in hopes of bringing in the best. I don’t know if you recall, maybe ten years ago, we had a great pediatric neurosurgeon in El Paso. Then he ended up leaving because he was in fact the only one picking up all the cases. He became overworked and decided to leave to a bigger city. With the building of the new medical school, how long before we can say we are fully staffed? As of now, doctors in Texas Tech Pediactrics are close to 500:1 if not more. In my opinion, this is not proper medical care. Especially children because they can’t tell you what is wrong. This in turn leads to misdiagnosis because right outside the door is a waiting room full of crying and irritable children waiting to be seen. Of all of this I developed this question. Is the El Paso four year Medical school rhetoric?

1 comment:

Cristina Devereaux Ramírez, Ph.D said...

I would go and look at the area itself. If you go there, you see this medical school in the middle of one of the poorest areas in the state. You can see bums under the bridge, old worn down shops. What does that all say about putting the medical school there in the middle of that area? Think about it. Go there and take some pictures not just of the building, but what it's surrounded by. That makes it more rhetorical.