The Image of Nursing

[Tait]

Now there are a many varied opinions on how nurses are treated by doctors, patients, patient families and even other nurses!

My question is this:

"What do you think the image of nursing is today?"

Keep in mind items such as:

1) Nurses in the media. (Such as my tarty avatar I used in a paper on nursing image in school)

2) Nurses as "angelic" figures.

3) Nurses as professionals.

I would also like to hear opinions on how the nursing image can be improved, if that is the consensus.

Should we carry business cards like I was promoted to in nursing school?

Should nurses be referred to by a more professional title? Not sure how this would work as most of us don't want our last names flitting about. (ie Nurse Smith etc)

Ideas, thoughts, complaints welcome!

Taitter

[Athenas83]

I hate the nursing diagnosis thing sooooooooooo much, oh my god.

[facetiousgoddess]

1. I would much prefer to be called "Nurse Smith". It is my professional title. I detest the false familiarity of being addressed by my first name.

2. "Angel" aggravates me. Yes I bring empathy and compassion to our profession. However I also bring a d*** tight set of assessment skills, knowledge of pathophysiology, pharmacology, critical thinking etc...Which do you want an angel to slap a cold washcloth on your forehead with a beatific smile while you slowly die or a nurse that initiates the appropriate interventions and when warranted contacts the physician to design a "medical" intervention???

Best book re: the current state of nursing "Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient

Care" by Suzanne Gordon.

Be warned I could only read 10-15 pages at a time, the unvarnished truth of this book left me angry and mouthier than ever......

Tres

[Medic2RN, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

I'm almost finished reading Suzanne Gordon's book. She eloquently states all the things I've found wrong and have witnessed/ experienced with nursing in my short time in this career. I need to tell my husband to read it, so he'll fully understand why I come home most days frustrated and angry.

Perhaps all nurses should be required to read it. If enough frustrated nurses could band together, then maybe some changes could be made.

The image of the angelic, hand holding, silent, born to nurture, self sacrificing, doing God's work doctor helper irks me. More nurses need to see themselves as legitimate professionals before anyone else will recognize them as such.

[Virgo_RN, BSN, RN]

It seems to me that many patients and their LOs think that the "nice" nurse is a good nurse, while the nurse with the less than warm and fuzzy bedside manner is NOT a good nurse. What they might realize is that that less than warm and fuzzy nurse may have been the one that caught that med error before it was made, saving the patient potential harm, while that "nice" nurse might have just gone ahead and given the med.

I've made this argument before to non-nursing people who had gripes about nurses not being "nice". Funny thing; they didn't want to hear it. They seem completely devoted to the perception that "nice"=good.

[Scrubby]

I love this subject!

I really do hope that the image of the nurse as either a ministering angel, battleaxe, sex symbol will soon be a thing of the past and that in the not so distant future the image of the nurse will be that of an autonomous professional.

But as long as the majority of nurses continue to be bullied by others, don't speak up and stay 'subordinate' then we will never move on.