FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Medical PTSD Patient Plans Wilmington “Rally for Medical Rights and Safety” October 19
Artist-Educator-Activist Seeks to Improve Envionment for Patients and Providers
Wilmington DE – October 6, 2022 – Artist-activist Shay Seaborne, CPTSD plans a “Rally for Medical Rights and Safety” at Rodney Square in Wilmington from 11 AM – 2 PM on Wednesday, October 19, 2022. An estimated ⅓ of patients experience healthcare-related harm during hospitalization and nearly 50% are preventable. Seaborne wishes to spread awareness about patient and provider rights and safety, bring together survivors and care providers for support, and “join our voices for greater administrative and legal protections.” Rally updates at www.ShaySeaborne.com/rally. Fellow artist-activist Viva Best, of Martinsburg, WV, will coordinate a collective interactive art experience for participants and visitors, including a healing water ceremony at the rally’s end. Participants and supporters are invited to wear red and to contribute to a community art project to illustrate the effects of preventable medical trauma on our community.
Seaborne is motivated by her own harmful medical experiences that include non-consensual surgery. The seriously injured patient sought accountability and was “stonewalled by a system that prevents resolution and offers layers of protection for the harmful provider, who is free to repeat offend.” Speaking with many others about her experiences, the activist-artist said she “heard too many stories of those who were also harmed and left with no legal recourse.”
Health professional burnout, “associated with worsening patient safety,” is widely known but ineffectively addressed. Seaborne noted the suicide rate of doctors is twice the national average. “It’s not an individual problem,” she said, “but a systemic issue. Providers chronically face too many demands and lack sufficient resources. They pay the price with their own well-being and their lives.” According to Pamela Wible, MD, “physician suicide is a public health crisis. One million Americans lose their doctors to suicide each year.”
The rally offers a variety of presenters, who will relate medical harm stories through spoken word, songs, or art. Attendees will be encouraged to bring their own written words, signed or unsigned, that could be shared with Delaware elected officials. Seaborne envisions something much larger. “I hope this is the beginning of a groundswell,” the activist said. “We, The People, need to end control of medicine by corporate hands and resuscitate its heart, which is the safe and supportive doctor-patient relationship,” Seaborne said. “With our voices of lived experience, we can raise a chorus for policy and legislative change. As vocal constituents, consumers, and providers, we can pressure the legislature and the industry for better medicine for ourselves and future Delawareans.”
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About Shay Seaborne
Shay Seaborne came to Delaware to crew for KALMAR NYKEL in 2015 after she quit her prior life to go for her lifelong dream of sailing tall ships. A few years later she became a trauma awareness artist-activist in response to disabling medical abuse she suffered after she asked mainstream medicine for help with severe Complex PTSD. No longer able to qualify as sailing crew due to her medical injuries, Shay “decided to stay and fight.” For over two years the Ardentown resident has taught the public and providers about trauma and stress recovery from an Interpersonal Neurobiology-informed (IPNB) perspective. Through the online courses she co-instructs with Imogen Ragone, Shay helps trauma survivors learn how they can build their own dynamic neuroscience-based healing framework. Ms. Seaborne plans a patient safety initiative for the next Delaware General Assembly. With ceramics and watercolors Shay creates outsider/underground art that reflects her lived experience as an extreme ACE Score survivor and promotes neuroscience concepts. Her Lapbook Gallery, “NOT Informed NO Consent,” a short graphic novel-like story that details her experience of non-consensual surgery, will be available for viewing on request at the rally and is also available in digital format.
Shay Seaborne, CPTSD
Artist, Educator, Activist
Website: ShaySeaborne.com
Public Facebook Page: Trauma Aware America
Facebook Groups: Trauma Aware America Group and Patients for Trauma Awareness
Instagram: @shayseaborne_cptsd
Hashtag: #TraumaAwareAmerica