Advice from current nurses or students?

Nurses General Nursing

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Hi,

I am extremely interested in pursing nursing as a career (registered nurse to begin with... hopefully NP later on). I will soon graduate with a bachelors degree in health sciences and will apply to an accelerated (2 year) nursing program (BSN). I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, do you like your job? How much autonomy do you have?

Secondly, what kinds of tests do you perform and how do you analyze the results?

Thirdly, nurses have a reputation for not being smart and "that's why they are a nurse". However, this doesn't really make sense to me. In my experience, in order to get into nursing school you need an extremely high GPA... not much lower than that required for med school. So I'm confused about this. But how much are you "looked down upon" in the work place? Especially by doctors.

Thanks!

Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
There was the nursing student that called us babysitters and all we do is get patients water and magazines. Nurses don't save patients, doctors do. Being a staff nurse was beneath her intelligence and go straight to being an NP.

I know this type. They come on here before they have even taken the board exam and ask which doctorate, PA or NP program that they should go into.

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Specializes in Medsurg/ICU, Mental Health, Home Health.
I think the OP is/was referring to the "not smart enough to be a doctor" thing, which is something I've heard lots of times. Though obviously, it's untrue.

I agree with Jen. I'm going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt. I think she poorly worded what she was going to say, that's all.

And yes, this continues to be a common misconception. That Joy Behar incident ("doctor's stethoscope") was in late 2015, remember.

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Specializes in Med-Surg, Emergency.
I'm curious about how you determined that nurses have a reputation for 'not being very smart'?

I'm wondering if it comes from the dozens of people who come in to complain that they were told "you're so smart, why don't you become a doctor?"

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Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.
And so you decided to come on here and basically insult all the members of the profession you hope to someday join- to be 'proactive'?

Just think about that for a while, ok?

OP didn't say that nurses weren't smart. OP said that they had gotten the impression that this stigma exists despite it not making sense to OP.

Come on, this can't be the first time you've heard that some people think nurses don't need to have that much intelligence.

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I think the OP is/was referring to the "not smart enough to be a doctor" thing, which is something I've heard lots of times. Though obviously, it's untrue.

Yes thank you! Exactly what I was referring too. I think nurses are incredibly smart because they ARE. However, I have heard of many instances where nurses are somewhat verbally "abused" by doctors for "not being smart" or not being as smart as them etc.

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Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.
I'm wondering if it comes from the dozens of people who come in to complain that they were told "you're so smart, why don't you become a doctor?"

Yup. I got told that.

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Good luck in your nursing school. While I feel I have autonomy in my current position, I work in a doctor-rich environment where patients/family often expect the MD to be available right away. Many hospitals are NOT like this, the MD only shows up to round or when the patient is crashing. I don't perform tests, I just collect blood/urine/sputum samples and these are sent to a lab. When I worked primary care, we did UAs, strep, flu, vision tests, etc. People who make comments about "you're too smart to be a nurse" have NO idea what nurses do. They think we wait at the nurses station and bring pillows and ice. They are the same family members who say "It's the nurse's job to do everything to make you happy" to the very stable patient who wants the 4th turkey sandwich and sends a search party when I don't return right away with it...as I am sweating bullets wondering what shape my admit is in, how my post-op vitals are doing, and if I have to keep titrating those two gtts or not. Happy times.

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I have heard a lot of generalizations about nurses, but never have I heard that we had a reputation about "not being smart" It's ironic this post would come the day after a very famous television personality had an entire monologue about how smart nurses are and how they are the ones that noticed his son needed cardiac surgery.

That said I have always had a lot of autonomy in the ER. I can't even begin to tell you what kind of tests we do and how we analyze the results. There are so many components and variances to that question. For example we do blood tests, the lab analyzes them and gives us the result. We know if it's the parameters of being normal or not. Depending on the patients condition we know if it is out of the parameter if that is acceptable for that patient. We know dependent on the situation if it's something we need to alert the doctor on immediately and start interventions. If you want a breakdown on how the blood is analyzed then you want to talk to the folks that work in the lab or a specific type of nurse. Everyone has their areas and jobs. A radiologist is going to be analyzing the CT report. Etc. Etc.

We aren't talking about a profession here that had 2-3 things and an algorithm for. There are literally thousands of variables here. You may be "young and naive" but you states she area bout to graduate with a BS in Health Science. So I feel like you might not be as "naive" as you're portraying yourself to be.

I'm sorry if I came off implying that nurses aren't smart. I think the complete opposite. My worries were amongst doctors' thoughts. I thought his monologue was very heartwarming and extremely inspirational towards all nurses.

That being said, thank you very much for this reply. It was very detailed and definitely gave me a more thorough perspective on nursing.

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I'm so sorry for the miscommunication! I worded it poorly in my original post. I think nurses are incredibly smart. Nursing school (from what I've been told) is intense and you need very very good marks to even get in. I was mainly referring to the negative perception that some doctors may have about nurses since they "didn't go to med school". I've heard that many doctors mistreat nurses because they aren't doctors and this the doctors "must know better". My question was, how much does this mistreatment or "looking down upon" happen in the work place?

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I've been nursing for two decades now.

I've never been looked down on by a doctor (and I've worked with some real Princes)

I've been looked down on by my coworkers. The BScN looks down on the diploma grads (last one graduated in 2009 and so they aren't that old) and LPNs.

Since the diploma course basically became the PN course, it's always entertaining when one of the old hospital grads goes off on a rant about how it used to be back in the 80s.

You earn your respect in the workplace by being steady, knowing your stuff and knowing your limits.

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.
I'm sorry if I came off implying that nurses aren't smart. I think the complete opposite. My worries were amongst doctors' thoughts. I thought his monologue was very heartwarming and extremely inspirational towards all nurses.

That being said, thank you very much for this reply. It was very detailed and definitely gave me a more thorough perspective on nursing.

I have heard the "why didn't you become a doctor" many times. So that I get. It was just the general "Nurses have a reputation of being not smart" that I think threw a lot of people because we may have some negative generalizations at times, but that specifically isn't one that I have heard. Lesson learned that wording can be important. We all have done it I am sure.

As far as your worry about the doctors thoughts.. I have actually found that majority, and not just like 60% but like 95% of the doctors I have encountered have a HUGE respect for nurses and their knowledge and will often stand up for us and so on. I have had doctors tell their patients before that they guarantee them the nurse knows more about what's going on then he does because she was so involved. If you're a good nurse and earn your doctors trust this won't be an issue. I can only speak for my area but in my area our docs are always there, they often are taking care of a dozen or so sick sick patients at once, they can be tied up in a code or trauma or RSI, you name it. They depend on their nurses being smart and efficient!

On the floors those nurses don't have their docs right there so I would imagine the docs depend on the same.

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I have heard the "why didn't you become a doctor" many times. So that I get. It was just the general "Nurses have a reputation of being not smart" that I think threw a lot of people because we may have some negative generalizations at times, but that specifically isn't one that I have heard. Lesson learned that wording can be important. We all have done it I am sure.

As far as your worry about the doctors thoughts.. I have actually found that majority, and not just like 60% but like 95% of the doctors I have encountered have a HUGE respect for nurses and their knowledge and will often stand up for us and so on. I have had doctors tell their patients before that they guarantee them the nurse knows more about what's going on then he does because she was so involved. If you're a good nurse and earn your doctors trust this won't be an issue. I can only speak for my area but in my area our docs are always there, they often are taking care of a dozen or so sick sick patients at once, they can be tied up in a code or trauma or RSI, you name it. They depend on their nurses being smart and efficient!

On the floors those nurses don't have their docs right there so I would imagine the docs depend on the same.

Lesson learned for my next post!

That's great to know, thank you! I worked with several nurses on a unit at a hospital, but rarely ever saw the doctors (I only saw the residents) so I wasn't sure of the nurse-doctor relationship. I only went by what I read on some of these forums. But thank you for clarifying this for me.

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