Nurse here! This keeps popping into my mind, keeps leaving me drawing a blank. Healthcare is a massive and resource-devouring industry, but is stuffed with people who actually give a shit about the people around them: the industry is a good candidate for improvement, and the people in it are likely to actually embrace those improvements (well, barring the odd salty af mofo who loses their shit at the first signs of change, but that person's in every industry - they'll figure it out eventually.)
I work in a run-of-the-mill hospital in the US, which encourages staff to take on system improvement projects, and these are were I see potential - especially for new nurses gunning for promotions.
The problem is what and how. All I can think of are things like recycling programs to tackle medical waste, but (at my facility at least) the waste that isn't already being recycled is either biohazardous or risks becoming biohazardous (like medication waste is huge, but we can't save half a vial of unused injection due to the possibility of that being contaminated by the first needle that drew from it).
So, looking for project ideas, both that I can start to implement myself, or to suggest to other staff looking to polish their resume. Smaller scale stuff is great for newer nurses; big scale stuff I can throw at management and see what sticks.
Let me know if you think of anything! Thanks all!
Previous poster specified "medics" which I understood as the people on the actual units providing care; and their reluctance to teach skills without the foundation of knowledge that enables those skills. My take was to put myself in their shoes and consider why - the very obvious answer being that doing so can cause harm. The number of bigots working the front lines is of course higher than zero, but also a very clear minority, so jumping to that as the answer to why they behave a certain way around trans people is not correct.
You're getting more into all the bullshit that influences healthcare at the systemic level: administration, politics, religion... and your right, the answers there get a lot more nefarious, but are very much not the people the previous poster or I was discussing.
This is called "rationalization". People are very good at finding reasonable whys when they go looking for them, in a way that correlates very weakly to actual reality.
If you think it takes bigotry to personally partake in systemic discimination, that is dangerous, and you will hurt people because of it.
If you care about people around you, especially if they are women or minorities, please read up on intersectionality, soft discrimination, microaggression, etc. Or better yet talk about it with friends and comrades.
These are all theory to describe lived experiences that are common sense once you empathize with the person who is a minority rather than with the nurse denying them medical aid.
edit to add: And to be clear, I'm not saying you're a bigot. The whole point is that you don't need to be a bigot to act discriminatory. Empathy for minorities (and people in general) is a constant practice, especially because every minority (and person) is different so the way society has taught us to disciminate against them is different. We all constantly need to unlearn stuff, and the sooner you start the better.