When will they change the name??? - Page 5

Although I don't have much of a a problem with the title "nurse" you do have to admit it has a largely female connotation-just look in the childrens' section at your local bookstore, or better yet at the symbol above the NURSE call button- it's a girl with cap and a page boy hair cut. It's changing slowly. For the most part I introduce myself as I'm **** and I will be the R.N. caring for you tonight. RN is a bit more descriptive in that my hospital uses a good number of LPNs-still nurses- but a different job than mine. I think you have to be male to truely get the jest of what the title "nurse" feels like to a guy. I'm not giving up my career because of the title but I do understand the sentiment.

Heck, if the problem is that there are connotations of breast feeding, then I want a new title too, and I am a woman! I am not mother to my patient, and I certainly won't be breastfeeding any of them!!! lolol

Can't say I blame you, but I sure would like to see the Press-Gainey if you did.

Yes. Thank you. Yes.

I'm striving for the honor to be called a "nurse", and to hopefully be as good at it as my wife. It is an honorable and noble title. I hope I will be worthy to share it with my male and female colleagues-to-be.

In other words: Get over it or move on.

this is a sore subject of mine, i had a arguement with another co-worker of mine over this same issue. he wanted to be called something other than nurse. i told him to goto plumbing school and be called a plumber then. i can't even stand being called a male nurse. when my aunts introduce me to their friends they say i'm a male nurse but i remind them i went to nursing school not "male nursing school". i would not like it if they change the title that i've earned and put forth so much effort for. then again why should they care. people call me a nurse everyday, everyone from the patient, the paitents family, doc's and even the janitor. it's the title of the vocation of my choice, and i'm proud of it. you should try to learn to be proud of that rn title. i know nursing has came a thousand miles from where it use to be, and at least 100 more miles since i've join the team. i see alot of times we are more proactive member of the healthcare team and our opinions on heathcare issues do count alot of times. i know the conception of the general public is we are nothing but bedpans and enemas, but even that is slowly changing. their are plenty of men out there that are no longer a nurse for some reason or another and a lrge majority of them would give their left testicle to have that "nurse" title after their name again.

Hand2cut, Bill Baldwin (& others on whose posts I will ignorantly remark without reading): With any group, there always members who find membership challenging, and there are always people who find gaining membership challenging or impossible. Just like there is someone in the group who is the tallest, shortest, most liked, least liked, etc. Could be membership to a club, a group of friends or professionals, a career, or a relationship, whatever. Fringe people who lack the requisite elements to belong to a certain group. Or you possess certain elements that outweigh what would make you attractive to the group. That's no reflection on your core value as a person; if you happen to be an a-hole it is merely incidental. The reasons that those people find gaining or maintaining membership challenging is because, like you, they don’t belong.

These people sometimes can identify a reason for their difficulty, such as Hand2cut’s problem with the title nurse. Or that “you have to know someone to get a job in such & such hospital”, and other reasons - even reasons on which one could actually base a logical and rational position. Whatever is identified as the causing this person’s difficulty, it is irrelevant and quite possibly inaccurate: this person just doesn’t belong. No malice, no judgment, you just don’t belong.

Now you might say tossing around ideas about a better title than “nurse” is not indicative of being one of the people I described above, but it is. The comments you both made are fundamentally incompatible with the essence of nursing. Additionally, (the very little) logic with which you propel your thoughts is misguided at best, fueled with wrong information and wholesale flakiness. Bring it back to this planet and think about what you actually care about.

It seems to me that one could be a very happy and successful nurse and still wish for a better-sounding title by which to describe onesself to friends, family, prospective girlfriends. I lean more to the "proud to be a nurse," school of thought, but I don't suppose I'd up and quit if they came up with a new title. I do perceive "nurse" as having some very positive connotations, not least of which is membership in a community of like-minded people, and I tend to have a special respect for nurses who are "old-school." I like the idea of tying myself to that tradition, and honestly, I think we sometimes get a little carried away in our desire to be seen as a profession. But I have no argument with those who want to do away with the "doctors' handmaidens" stereotype, and I think the desire for a less "feminine" title reflects a similar concern.

But, again, I'll stick with "nurse," and if the neuro resident on call last night wants me to hold her hand, I will--just not in a subserviant manner.

Its a job title/name, not your sex. Get over it. It tells people what job your are doing, not what body parts you have.

Equally proud to be an RN, a nurse, or a "male nurse". Honestly, "male nurse" doesn't bother me at all. I find it more descriptive than segregative. Let's face it, at 6% of the nursing population, we ARE still enough of an anomaly that it's going to be pointed out.

To me, motives are everything. I have yet to meet someone that referred to me as a male nurse that did so in a malicious manner. Even if it DID bother me, and it doesn't, I don't think I could get worked up over what, in effect, is an unintentional slight.

Relationships are interfaces. If someone approaches me in (from their perspective) a friendly or neutral way and I respond with hostility or patronizing correction because of their terminology, then it is I that have been rude, not the other way around.

If we are so quick to push the semantics that we become hostile and/or condescending to those not in our semantical 'know', then the problem is ours.

~faith,
Timothy. Male nurse and lovin' it.

Plus the numbers of nurses who happen to be male are trending upwards. In my accelerated class it was 25%. The basic class from my (unscientific) observation was 12%.