Ok folks, I'm just about ready to lose it and I know it's a little silly..or it may seem petty...but just take my feelings into consideration.
I am SICK to DEATH of SOME Medical Assistants, CNAs, and Respiratory Therapists (etc.) calling themselves NURSES, or allowing themselves to be called nurses...or saying that they are getting their "RN". Are you KIDDING ME?
Before I start, let me begin by saying that I respect ALL health care workers and think you should be proud of what you are doing, going to school for, and what your title is. However, I have LOW tolerance for people who break the law and throw around a professional title/license. It's beyond ignorant and I'm wondering how it can be stopped.
I would NEVER in a million years, call myself a Doctor...or a Nurse Practitioner..because I am NOT one. I did NOT go to school for it. I am a Registered Nurse and PROUD of it. If anyone calls me Doctor, or ANYTHING else, I quickly correct them with a sweet smile on my face.
Examples of what I have heard/seen/witnessed/etc.:
" Can I speak to the nurse?" Medical Assistant" Speaking, How can I help you?"
" So excited for my first day of school, we did injections!" says the medical assisting student..friend asks "OH, nursing program?!"...medical assistant student says "Yep, sure is!".
"Nurse Sarah, when do you finish school?". Sarah says, "In 2 months"...Sarah is in a RESPIRATORY therapy program.
My friend says to me," I went to school to become a nurse and finished, but I decided I prefer Social Work." I ask, "Really, so you're a nurse, where did you go?" Friend replies "Yes, CNA Tech Institute".(fake name) Uhm, that's a well known 6 month CNA school. SERIOUSLY?
"I actually teach the nurses on my unit everything. I know more than them and have more experience.", says the Medical Assistant after I ask them why they are referring to themselves as "Nurse".
I can't even go on to tell you how much more I have witnessed. MANY of this is coming from my friends. I'm going to be REALLY honest with you guys. I am just heated. I worked my BOTTOM off in nursing school. I applied to a program with 600 applicants in line (which is STANDARD) and was accepted into ONE of 20 seats. I killed myself not to be flunked out and passed with an average 3.5 GPA. It was four years of GRUELING work and I feel I have earned the right to refer to myself as a Registered Nurse. I'm very proud of it.
I feel like other health care workers are SERIOUSLY making a JOKE of the nursing field throwing around the title as though we are a dime a dozen. Why can't they be proud of what they do? EACH of those fields is JUST fine..but WHY are you breaking the law and calling yourself a Nurse?
Can you imagine what would happen if I called myself a Doctor? Sorry, but that's ignorant and pathetic. I would NEVER do it. If this thread offends you, then please don't reply. It shouldn't be offensive unless you are one of the few health care workers who live a lie and call yourself a nurse.
How do we address this and stop this? Medical Assistants are the BIGGEST group I have witnessed this by. I have a LOT of respect for them and envy their position. They ENJOY their jobs...but why do SOME (not ALL), throw MY nursing license value around like that by claiming they are a nurse?
What do you do when it's a friend doing this?
What do you do when it's a health care coworker?
I already know what I would do if I was going to a Doctor's office and they did this. That's easy. It's the friend part that is hard. I KNOW it's silly to be upset..but I have never seen so much ignorance. Why did I work hard if someone else can call themselves a nurse and only went to school for 6 months? What did I work for? Other than the obvious paycheck and passion?! ha :)
I'm all for serving and protecting the public, but a cape just seems a little too superhero-ish for me
I loved my nursing cape, we had to wear them on our way to and from work.
Uniforms are fairly strict in th UK, and identifying nursing staff not too difficult. Our unqualified have to wear different colours to qualified staff. Where I work they wear green, nurses royal blue and charge nurses navy.
Can't we email them and tell them they should address this with their colleges? It's a simple mass email for them to send to the head of every MA program and have them remind their students that they are NOT nurses, nor allowed to refer to themselves as one.
But the underlying cause isn't so hard to understand. Any time there is a power dynamic in the healthcare setting between "Nurse" and "Other" that makes the title of nurse very appealing: higher wages, greatly respected profession, greater job security and authority, etc. The nurse has become the universally recognised representative of healthcare.
It also doesn't help that the "Other" positions are often poorly defined and appear on the surface to be the same as or similar to the more powerful "Nurse" position. The main work of the nurse is unseen; it occurs in the mind, weighing risks and benefits, prioritising and categorising; it is thus rarely fully appreciated. This is certainly the case for most who would filch the title--for what?--for the temporary ingratiation of their egos--this being the same root cause for nurses to respect/horde/defend that title regarded as objectively higher, and maybe even occasionally use it as an easy way out mental weapon. As if it qualified one to be correct ipso facto.
If you want to make things better, work to address these issues. Let people know how much you respect them and their professions specifically. Let them own what they do and help them to define it and advocate that--remember, there is an actual power dynamic. Don't make it about how hard working and smart and funny and good looking and amazing nurses are...Be proud, but do not allow yourself to aggrandise; it hurts others and makes you a fool. You're a leader. Make the power dynamic be about having a place in a team, not about the struggle.
I am not trying to defend those who pretend to be nurses as a form of self-aggrandizement. However, it seems as though some of the people describing themselves as nurses (some MAs and CNAs, for example) are doing so because it's simpler than trying to explain the true nature of their jobs to the majority of patients. I imagine it's a lot easier to just agree you're a nurse (or at least not disagree) than to correct each of the dozens of people who misidentify you each day and then spend who knows how long trying to explain how your job differs from that of a nurse. That clearly doesn't make it right, but it does make it a bit more understandable (at least to me).
Maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty involved in trying to explain such differences to a succession of patients (the majority of them probably elderly). But it already seems as though a substantial proportion of people have only a vague and very dated impression of what nurses in general do today. Trying to explain why someone who does what a nurse used to do 20 years ago or who shares some overlapping responsibilities with certain nurses isn't actually a nurse seems like a losing battle when attempted on an individual basis. Perhaps groups representing and/or advocating for nurses should band together to produce a public awareness advertising campaign about the basic varieties of nurses (i.e., LPN, RN, NP) and what they're actually responsible for doing in this era. It might clear up some of the misconceptions and out-of-date notions, and at the same time help raise the public's appreciation of and respect for nurses.
It's just a thought. Sorry for the tangent.
I worked as a CNA(certified nurses assistant) for years before becoming a nurse. In long term care I made it easy for residents to understand..by telling them, when asked that I was not as nurse but a nurses helper.only those with a cognative problem had trouble with that concept.
I remembered a conversation I had with a person years ago (not verbatim but close). I think I met them at a party when I was studying for my degree:
Me: So what do you do for a crust?
Them: Oh I'm a nurse!
Me: Really? That's what I'm studying! (elaborate on what I'm actually studying at the moment). Where did u train?
Them: Oh I just picked it up as I went along.
Me (a bit baffled): Sorry?
Them: I just picked up my nursing skills at different places I was working at like aged care, etc.
Me: So you were with a nursing agency?
Them: No, I've never worked for a nursing agency.
Me (confused now): So...you didn't work for an agency, you trained through a hospital?
Them: No I've never done nursing training at a hospital.
Me: You are a nurse though?
Them: Oh yes!
Me: Are you registered or enrolled?
Them: I'm a nurses' aide (the old term for carer).
Me: So you're not a nurse then?
Them: Oh yes I'm a nurse I've worked in aged care places and some hospitals, and looked after patients, so I am a nurse.
Me: But you have to work under the RNs or ENs direction don't you? And you're not, so you're not a nurse then?
Them (getting slightly annoyed): I'm as much a nurse as you or anyone else, I do nurses' work and I look after patients. I've even had my own patient load (maybe in a nursing home under a RN).
Me: But you're not registered so you aren't a nurse. You're an aide.
Them: Nooo, I am a nurse just as much as YOU are! (end of conversation)
I gave up and walked away after that & probably got another drink. U just can't get it through some people's heads that registered nurses (of any kind) and aides are different jobs, and that aides are not nurses.
It frustrates me when people think PSAs, aides etc are the same as RNs/ENs. It really annoys me no end.
What frustrates me is when MAs with a few years experience as MAs will say that they know more than a new RN. You may have done a lot more blood draws, IVs, V/S etc but you certainly don't "know" more than an RN. A 9-month course is much less than a 4-year course in terms of education, disease process, implementation of nursing care etc. I'm sorry if i sound a little uppity, but it gets on my nerves when people take for granted the 4 years some of us put into nursing school.
Specializes in Acute Spine, Neuro, Thoracic's, LTC.
Or what really gets me is kind of the opposite from what you are discussing:
When people ask what you do and you tell them you are a nurse and they say " Oh so you are an RN?"I tell them "no I'm an LPN" and they respond with " Oh I thought you said you were a nurse" ?
I'm planning to become a CNA as soon as I can, but I would definitely not do this. If a patient called for the nurse, do you think it would be okay to come in and ask, "Hi, I'm not a nurse but I'm the CNA, what's wrong?" or something like that? If it was just a simple thing I would take care of it but if it sounded serious I would get the nurse. Is that considered okay, or should I get the nurse no matter what?
I definitely agree that it's not right for people to claim to be a nurse when they're certainly not. You have to work extremely hard to earn the title and only those who have worked that hard deserve to be called and to call themselves a nurse.
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
Even though it is frustrating at times to explain over and over to anyone who will listen that a nurse means something entirely different than a tech, CNA or MA we should do it anyway to raise awareness to the public and our co-workers as well. As someone above pointed out, the challenge is that what our differences are lie in the realm of thought and often look no different to people on the outside.
I take care of patients in homes that often also employ unlicensed caregivers. Even with families who've interacted with the healthcare system for decades the belief is that the caregiver gives them more bang for the taxpayer's buck because they do housework and the nurses "just sit there". It's extremely difficult to battle that mentality.
I know of actual cases where the difference became glaringly clear. There was the case of two people in similar health situations where one chose to dispense with skilled nursing altogether and the other to have a mixture of both. The person with no skilled nurses developed all sorts of problems and complications that a trained nurse would have nipped in the bud. The first person told me they were tired of being "nagged" and preferred to be cared for by people who would not question anything they were asked to do or not do. I could sympathize with the feeling that the patient has simply had enough and wished to let their disease take it's course, but having nurses there would have spared them some really harrowing and painful events during that process.
What is an LPN, a PA and an MA? I get confused with all the different US terms. I think a PA is a physician's assistant is it? How is that different from a RN?
You seem to have so many different nursing titles like ASN etc is this different RN levels?
LPN/LVN= Licensed Practical Nurse/Licensed (Vocational?) Nurse; East Coast is LPN, West Coast and Midwest is LVN (so I understand)
PA= Physicians Assistant- Not related to a nurse.
ASN/ADN= Associate of Science Degree in Nursing/ Associate Degree of Nursing (same thing- usually two year degree from a community college)
BSN= Bachelors of Science in Nursing (may be some variation of the full name depending on school? this is a four year school)
to add, there are even options for people with Bachelors degree in other fields, who once they complete the pre-reqs, can take an accelerated program that affords them a BSN in a little under two years.
Once you have a degree, BSN, ASN, MSN (Masters....) you retain that degree. HOWever, you can still lose your RN if you lose your licensure.
In the states, ASN and BSN prepared nurses both take the same NCLEX. The designation of RN comes with passing your boards and obtaining and maintaing your licensure.
At a seminar I attended, one of the speakers referred to anyone who does not have their RN as NAN's "Not A Nurse".
There is a great, raging debate (check these boards) for ASN vs. BSN here in the States.
Some states are taking steps to make BSN entry level for nursing in their state. Obviously, some community colleges and ASN prepared nurses are not happy about this.
Bottom line in the US, anyone who has achieved their ASN, BSN, MSN and sits and passes the boards is an RN.
XB9S, BSN, MSN, EdD, RN, APN
1 Article; 3,020 Posts
I loved my nursing cape, we had to wear them on our way to and from work.
Uniforms are fairly strict in th UK, and identifying nursing staff not too difficult. Our unqualified have to wear different colours to qualified staff. Where I work they wear green, nurses royal blue and charge nurses navy.