Lack of respect for nurses

I had a friend once who thought that nursing was fairly easy. When i told her that my 12-hour shift is very hectic and tiresome, she thought i was lying and seem skeptical. When I told her that her job as a movie theatre usher for 5 hours a day seemed like childs play compared to my 12-hours, she got offended. Its easy for people to class nursing into an "easy" job and no-skill-required profession.
The longer I work in nursing the more convinced I am that people will never fully understand how much responsibility, education, critical thinking and work ethic are needed in this career. That old friend of mine made me think about how lazy and stereotyped nursing is seen as a profession. The general public seems to think that we are uneducated, handmaids, gay men, over-sexed bimbo's, and Angels. There is no in-between.

I think part of the problem is that the public doesn't see the critical thinking, doesn't hear the conversations that take place between doctor and nurse, doesn't realize the knowledge based required--they see someone pushing a button, raising the head of the bed--they see the tasks, not the thinking behind the tasks. When we say to a patient, "you need to think about making wiser food choices," and then review a teaching sheet with them, they think we are just reading off a sheet prepared by a doctor. It doesn't occur to them that we have the knowledge base to know they need this teaching even though the doctor hasn't ordered it yet and that we developed the teaching sheet ourselves. We just follow orders.

So then what do we do? I know that years ago, before I became a nurse, when I was a patient in the hospital, I thought of nurses as the ones who handed out pills, changed the IV's, and kept me comfortable. And that's all I wanted to know about them. I would have been annoyed if someone had tried to point out to me how much intelligence and education it takes to be a nurse, and frankly, I wouldn't have listened. I would have assumed that nurse must not be very secure in her abilities and intelligence if she had to point them out to me. Many of you come from nursing families. I did not and I was ignorant about what nurses do. But...I DID NOT WANT to be educated, least of all educated by a nurse!

Maybe if we could ever get a documentary with background commentary on what is going on in a nurses's mind when he or she interacts with and assesses a patient, what goes into decisions a nurse make, that might help educate some. I just fear that if we as nurses try to do this we come off as very insecure professionals indeed.

I have had this happen to me. I prefer to say, and you may quote me on this

"The details are technical and boring to someone uninvolved in the field.. Needless to say it's more involved than you may think."

And then maybe wow them with a discussion of clotting factors, electrolytes, fluid balance, and the massive monolithic migraine that is med administration.

Though lately I've been thinking (channeling betty neuman here) that doctors focus on treating an ailment, where nurses promote wellness in general. We double check what the doctors do, while keeping an eye on everything else. Is that legit, ya think?

I used to have this frustration, especially when I was first accepted in to nursing school and then even more so when I landed my SICU position. I wanted to share my excitement with everyone I knew... I was proud of myself! Then I realized that people outside of the medical field just don't get it and most of them never will. I ended up so upset that my friends and even my parents weren't as proud of me as I had expected. I decided to leave it alone and not let it get to me.
A little side note, I do crack a bit of a smile when I receive the phone calls such as "my son has this" or "I have pain here", and then my favorite was then my friend's daughter asked me a question and said "you're a nurse so I know that you know what you are talking about".

My favorite two are actually both from my Dad. The first was just a few days into starting nursing school. I love our faculty...they're really just amazing folks. I was telling him about a Prof I had met that day. She's so accomplished, and just freaking brilliant. I also mentioned to him that she has her PhD in nursing. His comment? "Wow, so do you think she'll be going to med school soon to become a Doctor?" I just shook my head before trying again to explain that she HAD a Doctorate, in nursing...he then clarified (in case I misunderstood I guess) that he meant a real doctor.

He's getting better :-)

The other happened a year or so before hand. I had been planning to go to nursing school for a couple years. The plan was to become a FNP and be a PCP in a rural area. My Dad knew all of this, we had spoken of it a couple times. So, he moved to a new area and found a new health clinic that he liked. He specifically like the new Doc he saw. She was (as he put it) a younger gal (which could mean anyone under 40 ) he thought she was fantastic, very thorough, and really listened to what he said. There was just one thing he didn't understand....she had written a prescription for him and instead of MD, it said FNP after her name I explained that she was a nurse practitioner...he quickly corrected me, that she wasn't a nurse....she was who he went to see and that she wrote him a script....it took about 10 minutes of explaining before he realized that not only was she a nurse....but that's what I had been going to school to eventually be!

He really is getting better :-D

No one can truly understand what is involved with nursing unless they experience it firsthand themselves. Even now (I have my BSN, which I was pretty dang proud of!) I hear from my dad, "Are you ever going to get your Master's?" Ugh. Others will just never get it!

Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news..........but it doesn't get any better when you become an NP. Even though that role is totally different from the role of an RN or LPN, people can't seem to wrap their minds around it. To them, only a doctor should be diagnosing and treating acute and chronic illnesses. Believe it or not, I seem to get the same attitude from other nurses! I am a new grad NP so I got this rude awakening fairly recently. Needless to say I was very disheartened to find out that other nurses saw me as competition. My decisions are constantly being challenged. The other day someone tried to explain the pathophysiology of wound healing....as if I didn't already learn this as an RN, much less an NP!! I just looked at her like "Really? For real? You think this wasn't covered in NP school? I mean you learned it and you're an LPN. Don't you think I know that already?" But I digress. I feel that a lot of them have a chip on their shoulder because they feel that nurses with advanced degrees undermine their knowledge because they didn't get more than an Associates degree. I started as an Associates degree RN. I certainly didn't see myself as an idiot back then, so there's no way I would look down on another nurse with undergraduate education! I also respect nurses with years of experience. I always tell people that I learned more on the job than nursing school could ever teach me in 4 years. As an NP I definately know that I will be learning a whole lot on the job. There's no way 2 years of grad school can teach you everything there is to know about treating patients. This whole profession needs to just GET A GRIP!! No one is going to respect us or take us seriously if we don't get it together within the ranks. We need to stop eating our young, stop being defensive when younger nurses decide to go for advanced degrees, stop assuming that nurses with less formal education aren't knowledgable, and stop seeing ourselves as being in competition with doctors.

Heck, most nurses don't even respect EACH OTHER.

I have a manager that consistently berates me if I forget even the smallest detail. It's just her way to do this, and she does it to everybody on the staff. Nevermind that I have a higher educational level than she does. It's just how nurses are.

Perhaps even they started to respect each other, they'd garner the respect they deserve from those outside the profession.