[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 94 (Tuesday, July 18, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       CELEBRATING NURSING AND KHALIL KHOURY, MSC PHARM, BSN, RN

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                            HON. LOIS CAPPS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 18, 2006

  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Speaker, as a Member of Congress who is a registered 
nurse and cares deeply about fostering dialogue between Arabs and 
Israelis, I wanted to share an inspiring story that appeared in the 
July 2006 issue of the American Journal of Nursing. Khalil Khoury, 
MScPharm, BSN, RN is head nurse of an internal medicine unit at 
Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem where Prime Minister 
ArieI Sharon was treated in December 2005. At a time of such 
hopelessness and extraordinary tensions between Palestinians and 
Israelis, Khalil's story provided me with a little bit of hope and 
optimism that all is not lost in the Middle East. I urge my colleagues 
to take note of this story and hope it instills that same bit of hope 
in you.

           [From the American Journal of Nursing, July 2006]

    The Hospital as Sanctuary: An Arab Nurse Who Cared for Israel's 
                        Stricken Prime Minister

                           (By Khalil Khoury)

       I am head nurse on a unit known as Internal Medicine A at 
     Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem. This is 
     where former prime minister Ariel Sharon was admitted for 
     several days after a minor stroke on December 18, 2005. (He 
     subsequently suffered a major cerebral accident on January 5, 
     2006, from which he has not recovered.) During his first 
     hospitalization, my staff of Arab and Jewish nurses cared for 
     him in an atmosphere of mutual respect--a sharp contrast to 
     life outside of the hospital walls.
       Internal Medicine A is a microcosm of Israel. Of 40 nurses 
     under my supervision--all Israelis--one-third of us are 
     Christian or Muslim Arabs and the rest are Jews. Yet we work 
     together as a harmonious unit, an approach that is the basis 
     for the humane way we treat our patients. I think of my 
     workplace as an island of sanity within the insanity that 
     surrounds us. As an Israeli citizen, I have the same rights 
     as Jewish Israelis, but when security guards at a shopping 
     center or coffee shop see me or hear me speaking Arabic to a 
     companion, they demand to see my identification and search my 
     bag more thoroughly than those of others. My professional 
     accomplishments, my integration into Israeli society, my 
     triumphs over the odds against Arabs in my country--none of 
     this matters.
       I was born in Haifa in 1971, and my parents--a construction 
     worker and a housewife--raised me to respect humankind, to 
     accept others and to help them. This led me to nursing, but 
     my career choice was also a practical decision. Because they 
     are perceived as security risks, Israeli Arabs can get jobs 
     in nursing more easily than they can in other fields, such as 
     high tech or the military. I enrolled at the Hadassah-Hebrew 
     University School of Nursing in Jerusalem in 1992; when I 
     graduated in 1996, I immediately went to work as an RN on 
     Internal Medicine A. I was named head nurse in 2001.
       When the prime minister was assigned to our department, 
     there was considerable media excitement. ``The team that 
     treats prime minister Sharon includes Arabs,'' commentators 
     proclaimed. Given the political situation in Israel, the 
     presence of Arabs on the treatment team was considered 
     exceptional. Yet inside the hospital, we performed our duties 
     exactly as we would for any patient. The only substantive 
     difference was the necessity of accommodating the prime 
     minister's security staff in an adjoining patient room with a 
     connecting door and the political staff in one of our two 
     doctors' lounges. We cared for the prime minister and 
     prepared and administered his medications, including 
     injections, all without interference from the bodyguards who 
     were at the bedside around the clock.
       I learned about my own prejudices from the experience of 
     being one of Sharon's nurses. Before meeting him during his 
     first hospitalization in 2005, I would have described him as 
     tough, formal, distant, and not very nice, based on his 
     public image. But he turned out to be pleasant and polite in 
     conversation; without his bodyguards and political retinue, 
     he would have been considered simply a nice old man.
       I don't see Sharon as my enemy, although Israel does not 
     always see Arabs as friends. Fighting stereotypes is what I 
     do almost every day, whether it is prejudice aimed at me as a 
     man in a traditionally woman's profession or as an Arab 
     living and working in Israel. I am helped in this by the 
     principles of nursing, which emphasize patience and tolerance 
     toward others, without regard to race, religion, sex, or 
     nationality. This is how I was raised, and working at 
     Hadassah has strengthened my commitment to these values.

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