“This is a second-rate facility,” Zenobia Thompson, former head nurse at Homer G. Phillips Hospital said of the new clinic bearing that name in north St. Louis during a panel discussion at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine on Wednesday.
“Here at Saint Louis University, they have created a beautiful hospital,” Thompson said. “To call the new facility they are building in North City a hospital, and in the name of Homer G. Phillips, is a political violation.” Panelists weighed in on the name of the hospital being used for a three-bed facility being built in North St. Louis City as part of the Northside Regeneration plan. Retired pediatrician Dr. Mary Tillman said, “They are banking on the fact that the mapping agency is creating a small health center for people who are insured and have the means. They do not want a bunch of people who do not have money to come to it. That’s what I think.”
The hospital will have three rooms dedicated to inpatient services and one emergency room as opposed to the original Homer G. Phillips hospital, which was a full-service five-story hospital.
Homer G. Phillips Hospital, which was segregated when it opened, had 600 beds and nearly 1,000 skilled health care workers.
“There were letters from not only the former Congressman William L. Clay, Dr. Will Ross at Washington University and Homer G. Phillips alumni, but other citizens in the community [responding] negatively to them appropriating the name. It trivializes the significance of what the name ‘Homer G. Phillips’ memorializes,” Thompson said.
Jobyna Foster, retired nurse and former president of the Homer G. Phillips Nurses Alumni Incorporated, said opposition from alumni members has not been taken seriously.
“In the last four months, we have voted to have our name trademarked so that our name doesn’t appear on a ‘905’ or a liquor store anywhere,” Foster said. “We wrote, with regards to the use of Homer G. Phillips, in opposition; we expressed that this new facility is a hospital with only three beds and at the time, it wasn’t even identified as having only three beds.
“We oppose that whole scenario and plan Paul McKee had brought to St. Louis.” said Jobyna Foster, retired former Homer G. Phillips nurse
During the panel discussion, Johnson asked the audience, which was majority white, if they were willing to talk about systemic racism in the hospital setting, since it is a persistent problem seen in the medical field. Only three hands went up in response.
Dr. Denise Hooks-Anderson, associate professor of family and community medicine at SLU and interim assistant dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, hosted the panel discussion as part of a new course presented at SLU designed to educate medical students about political and societal factors in the medical field.
“We are hoping to increase education around social determinants of health,” Theresa Drallmeier, assistant professor and director of curriculum and scholarship for the SLU Family Medicine Residency in St. Louis said.
“Basically, all of the things that impact health outcomes that are not about medicine itself, but rather the systemic and societal factors that can help people be healthy or cause them not to be, like the impact of racism on medicine, LGBTQ health, immigrant and refugee health, bias and cultural humility.”
In a question-and-answer section, the panelists gave the auditorium, filled with future medical professionals, advice to use in their various medical career paths.
“Address your patients’ needs and don’t brush them off,” Joybena Foster said.
“To the future doctors of the world, make sure that this is the profession you want to be in because as a physician, this is not just for today, but you will be a physician for life. Make sure you treat the patient with dignity and respect regardless of their ethnic background because they are looking to you for their health.”
