It wasn't that long ago that I looked down on the disdainfully termed SJWs - social justice warriors. The people who think we still need feminism or race equity or LGBTQ+ rights advocacy. I don't think it came from a place of malice - rather of privileged ignorance. And how privileged that ignorance is - to be a cis gendered "model" minority growing up in cosmopolitan cities with highly educated and cultured friends and family.
I never thought of myself as an advocate, one of those bitter folk always complaining about the state of the world. It took being thrown into the world of the underserved - one where people are incarcerated for untreated mental illnesses, where being Indigenous sentenced children to higher mortalities, where people choose between medicine for themselves or food, where a country must beg tourists for its oxygen cylinders returned after mountain expeditions, and where young people are casted out of their families for the "crime" of expressing their genders and sexualities. It took diving face first into this world to even scratch the surface of advocacy and what "check your privilege" really means. Has it made me bitter? Oh yeah. Do I regret it? Hell no.
Anyways, that's the tangential background. Recently I was called by a shit-stirrer - by myself that is. At the first clinic where I'm working as staff physician (can you believe it?!?) I notice things. I notice my residents being worked into the ground and losing their love of family medicine. I notice patients who suffer large gaps in their care. I notice clerical staff who need sick days every month for their mental health. I should say I support mental health days but people shouldn't be so overworked they rely on these days to survive the work.
By nature of the training of my past year, I've developed a habit of speaking. Speaking up and speaking loud and speaking often. There are 3 or 4 strands of emails and conversations I'm having with people on issues I've detected. I've emailed the clinic manager probably more than anyone should. And the nursing manager. And the physician manager. And I'm about to email the resident manager.
Am I a shit-stirrer? Probably. Does shit need stirring? I think so.
