Did ya catch the article in July AJN called "I'm No Angel" written by Margaret C. Belchers MSN, RN, CCRN ? Alot of follow-up opinions in this October issue as well. If you read it....what's your opinion?
She sure gets bashed for the article in follow-ups. I agree with her totally. I smile and cringe when I get called an angel. Sorry folks. I'd take solid, reality-based praise like "You are so competent" or "You are so smart" or "I trust my family member in your hands because you are so knowledgeable" over being an "angel" any day of the week. It is such an outdated notion. So Florence Nightengale-ish. We've come along way baby. It takes away from what we really are doing as nurses and what we are capable of, and how much responsibility we carry. Nice yes, caring yes, compassionate yes....but here on earth as a fellow HUMAN BEINGS....not magical angels. YUCK. EEK. SAPPY. This to me is not bad to feel this way. It is not a gruff, old, burnt-out nurse attitude. To me it is enriching thought and a foundation for a more pleasing and rewarding career platform for the future. We all need to work towards eliminating the Doctor=God and Nurse=Angel mentality built in to this profession. It is a dysfunctional illness that only serves to make us loosen our grasp on reality and to minimize our true worth. It makes for poor doc/nurse relationships. Our patients see us as pillow-fluffing angels of the past...as if the docs are in the hall 24/7 handling every ticking moment. And we, as nurses are OK with that? Feel good and valued about that? Public education....long overdue. But to get the right message out, we have to LIVE the part. EDUCATED NURSE. NOT ANGEL. I am a good nurse and that is what is necessary to do a good job. (Besides, wings and halos tend to get all tangled up in privacy curtains) Tell me i'm thoughtful, sweet, caring...just don't put me on the Angel pedestal.
Thanks for this hour of your life. I will step off of my soapbox now.
But yes, the we are Angels of Mercy and God's ministers on Earth is alive and well, and not a "myth" is some people's eyes. I need to be very respectful of others beliefs in this matter.
I recently got a flyer from a mail-order/online order company that sells nursing stuff and I was amazed by the number of nurse-as-an-angel stuff in there.
I mentioned this is another post but do not confuse commercialization with belief. Yes there are many items that have Angels and nurses intertwined, these are commercial products aimed at an audience. Just Like you can get Betty Boop items and I am betting even Garfield in a nursing form! These items being available does not mean that people literally believe they are angels or that nursing is angelic. Consider though that if there is a portion of the public that does feel this stereotype wouldn't it be because they feel that Angels are good? I still can't get past anyone seeing this as detrimental. Especially when we are best known for "eating our young"!There is also a nurses prayer.
I have written an article because this has been so much on my mind.
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
Who says nursing is best known for eating its young? Man I am tired of that.....
I have worked 3 different jobs/professions in 20 years. In EACH of them, young were eaten with gusto and relish, if they allowed themselves to be. Think every other profession welcomes it's youngest and newest to their ranks with open arms? Think again....
It's not just nursing... you think nursing is bad, try MILITARY. Or MEDICINE! Or corporate America. A dose of reality hurts sometimes......and people can be evil everywhere. No, not all of us are young-eaters, either. I mentor and take under my wing each and every new nurse that comes to work with me...as well as students, too. I lead by example, I hope.
I am really tired of hearing this (we eat our young) and being stereotyped as a profession as either angels or young-eaters. Neither fits! Can't we just be individuals?
Who says nursing is best known for eating its young? Man I am tired of that.....
I have worked 3 different jobs/professions in 20 years. In EACH of them, young were eaten with gusto and relish, if they allowed themselves to be. Think every other profession welcomes it's youngest and newest to their ranks with open arms? Think again....
I feel that as nurses we are supposed to be compassionate and caring and WE over all other professions should be more tolerant and helpful to our young!
It's not just nursing... you think nursing is bad, try MILITARY. Or MEDICINE! Or corporate America. A dose of reality hurts sometimes......and people can be evil everywhere. No, not all of us are young-eaters, either. I mentor and take under my wing each and every new nurse that comes to work with me...as well as students, too. I lead by example, I hope.
I do not think it is just nursing I think it is just greatly emphasized in nursing. Other professions are supposed to be "Dog eat Dog" As I mentioned we are supposed to be kind and caring and compassionate yet we have somehow become known for our pitiful treatment of new grads.
I am really tired of hearing this (we eat our young) and being stereotyped as a profession as either angels or young-eaters. Neither fits! Can't we just be individuals?
I personally don't think nursing is bad I am saying as sterotypes go I here much much much more about how poorly nurses treat their own than I do about any type of Angelic sterotype.
I completely agree that we should all be induvidually seen and taken as the professionals we are, judged on performance, abilities and the compassion we display. I too feel that a nurses eat their young sterotype is horrendous, this is why I am so much more adamant that it be stopped and put to rest over some Angelic stereotype that I see mostly in commercialization of products aimed at an audience that wants these items.
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
I guess I cannot agree with you 100%. I see what you are saying...and I understand. But I feel we are being unfairly judged as a group. As "angels" we are expected to take what comes without complaint. As "young eaters", we are violating a standard of compassion/belief we are somehow superhuman in being expected to rise above it all, everyday. We cannot win, can't anyone see that?
For the most part, I think we nurses are a compassionate, caring lot---just look at these boards if you would care to doubt me
-------But we are a group who are asked to pull MORE than our weight in the medical world...........sometimes, I think we burn out from having to give, give and then give some more to an increasingly ungrateful and sometimes hateful group of physicians, patients/family members and administration. It's the squeeze that hurts...and we have only "so much" to give.
When hospital/facility cutbacks are brought about, nursing always suffers. When people are asked to "do more with less", nursing is always at the top of the list of people asked to do so.......many of us are doing so many jobs OTHER than nursing; we feel horrible when we go home at night (or day), feeling we could have done more for our patients, if only time allowed.
We are being asked to draw our own labs, do dietary consulting/ teaching, take out trash, clean up messes as housekeeping is overwhelmed themselves, etc., all of this on top of increasing mounds of paperwork that HAVE To be done---that never get better......it goes on and on. Each of these things chips away at the integrity of our jobs as NURSES. On top of this, often our facilities foist students and new nurses on us, expecting us to train them without allowing the TIME or compensating us in any way for the task at hand. It's unfair to both student/new orientee and the nurse, but it's done every day. That nurses seem cranky or burnt out is understood when you see it from this end.
So IF people who are "supposed" to be compassionate burn out, it's understood, that is, except for nurses. We are somehow supposed to be super-human and above everyone else in this respect. I find that grossly unfair. Do I justify young-eating that goes on? NO, never--- but I think it's people overestimate its occurence and frequency and frankly dislike being held to a standard that is higher than human. That is JMO of course!
Who says nursing is best known for eating its young? Man I am tired of that.....
I have worked 3 different jobs/professions in 20 years. In EACH of them, young were eaten with gusto and relish, if they allowed themselves to be. Think every other profession welcomes it's youngest and newest to their ranks with open arms? Think again....
It's not just nursing... you think nursing is bad, try MILITARY. Or MEDICINE! Or corporate America. A dose of reality hurts sometimes......and people can be evil everywhere. No, not all of us are young-eaters, either. I mentor and take under my wing each and every new nurse that comes to work with me...as well as students, too. I lead by example, I hope.
I am really tired of hearing this (we eat our young) and being stereotyped as a profession as either angels or young-eaters. Neither fits! Can't we just be individuals?
What about journalism? :chuckle I took journalism classes for a year in college, but the idea of working under crushing deadlines in a chaotic, dog-eat-dog environment made me less and less enamored with it. Oh, and reporters "eat their young" too. In fact, when you're new, they call you a "cub reporter", which means you get the worst hours, the most boring assignments, and little respect from the "real" reporters until you prove yourself by getting the Big Story (such as a four-alarm fire downtown).
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.
yea I have a friend with a journalism degree. She quit that after 2 years of getting kicked around and now is an at-home mom who writes for her church paper and alma mater only....it IS a rough world in journalism, too. But then, they are not nurses and not expected to be better than that, I guess, huh.
yea I have a friend with a journalism degree. She quit that after 2 years of getting kicked around and now is an at-home mom who writes for her church paper and alma mater only....it IS a rough world in journalism, too. But then, they are not nurses and not expected to be better than that, I guess, huh.
I decided to write my own article for my little nursing times.
Here you go anyone that would like to read it is welcome. You are also welcome to write letters to the editor if you disagree, and of course as always you may post here, but no personal attacks please. I am entitled to my opinion too.
Okay, so I read the first and last few pages of this thread, but I've never been one to let my ignorance prevent me from having an opinion.
My present job title is "Support Associate" and our badges say "SA". Once had a patient's family member tell me it must stand for "Saints, Always." Clearly, she had never been in our break room!
I can see the objection to the angel stereotype, but I don't really feel the objection. Yes, it's an exaggeration, but at our best, we do some wonderful stuff. Theologically, one could get into the idea that ordinary humans exist on a higher level than angels, since we have free will and stuff. Maybe that's the point--ordinary people in many occupations choose to do "divine" things pretty regularly.
But, I have to say, I do consider nursing a calling. When I started school, I saw it as a trade--a good job with flexible hours for decent pay. I still think that's valid, and I still get more perturbed over the whole "profession vs trade" thing than I do about the religious bits. I don't dismiss the professional aspects of nursing, but I worked many years as a carpenter, and I see a tradesman as a fine and noble thing to be. As a nurse, I hope very strongly to apply what I consider to be tradesmanlike values--pride in my craft, a willingness to do what needs to be done, even respect for the traditions of the past. I hope never to buy into some notion that I am "above" some of the tasks associated with my job, which is the alarm I hear when I hear too much talk about a "profession."
Somewhere along the way, though, I began to feel I had been called to be a nurse. Certainly, the path that brought me here has been full of unforeseen twists of a sort that make one wonder about divine intervention. In any case, I now bridle at suggestions I've read that the name of the profession should be changed to something more "male friendly" than nursing, to attract more men. Heck with that! When (if?) I graduate, I want to say, "I'm a nurse."
No, I probably won't ever suckle my young (although I have read that I actually could, if I tried really hard. Egad!) And I'll probably talk myself out of wearing a short dress with a really low neckline next Halloween. But, at the moment, "I'm a nurse." sounds like one heck of a powerful, awesome thing to be able to say, in ways that, somehow, "I'm a sales rep." doesn't.
On the other hand, I'm a guy, and the older I get, the more I seem to fall into guy patterns, such as defining myself by my job. When I was a carpenter, some part of me defined manliness by the ability to nail pieces of wood together, and as stupid as that sounds, I've never completely gotten over it. So, as much as I look forward to making what seems, now, like "big bucks" for working three nights a week, and having the rest of the week to play, and for all the times I haven't recognized a patient when I met them outside the hospital, and for all that I have no intention of being anybody's chump just so they'll call me an angel, I believe and hope that being the best nurse I can be is going to be an important part of my life. If, in the process, I serve some "Higher Good," all the better.
Being called a "Angel" has never offended me because I know it is being used as a term of appreciation and not as a offensive term. I can see both sides of the argument but like I said. I would rather be called a "Angel" compared to some things that I have been called.
:rotfl:
CCU NRS
1,245 Posts
I mentioned this is another post but do not confuse commercialization with belief. Yes there are many items that have Angels and nurses intertwined, these are commercial products aimed at an audience. Just Like you can get Betty Boop items and I am betting even Garfield in a nursing form! These items being available does not mean that people literally believe they are angels or that nursing is angelic. Consider though that if there is a portion of the public that does feel this stereotype wouldn't it be because they feel that Angels are good? I still can't get past anyone seeing this as detrimental. Especially when we are best known for "eating our young"!There is also a nurses prayer.
I have written an article because this has been so much on my mind.