Practicing social justice is acting in accordance with fair treatment regardless of economic

status, race, ethnicity, age, citizenship, disability, or sexual orientation [ CITATION Sta14 \l 1033 ]. In
other words, social justice is the practice of treating everyone equally. Nurses play an important role of
practicing social justice. I do not agree that social justice is the same as social medicine. The government
owning and operating our healthcare system is a scary thought to me.

Whether or not the healthcare system is fair or not is very argumentative and also depends on
the discussion. Overall, I do not think it is a fair one. In my career, I have witnessed great care given to
employees that are barely sick while someone that is not an employee gets the smallest amount of
attention. I have also witnessed hard working citizens unable to get the surgeries needed because they
can not afford insurance while someone who has not worked a day in their life get all the healthcare
they want. There are many patients who abuse the emergency rooms with minute problems such as a
cough or even chronic back pain. The emergency room doctors usually give whatever medications the
patients want. All of this is abusing the healthcare system.

Waiving a magic wand leads to a debate on politics as well as fair healthcare. I do wish there was
a way to educate everyone on the use of an emergency room. One reason patients come the ER
sometimes is because of fever so if we teach these patients to take medicines at home that will decrease
the fever, they may not come to the hospital. I also wish there was a way we could make medications
more affordable to everyone. In my opinion, our healthcare system needs more help and I do not know
where to start on how I would change that.

References
Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, j. (2014). Public health nursing: Population-centered health care in the
community (8 ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.