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 :)
Ive been a tech for quite some time and all these experiences I have seen first hand, I really don't understand why someone (CNA) would put themselves in such a position. For me personally Im too busy doing V/S, bed baths, turning patients, and doing EKG's to want to take on an RNs' role when Im not one...I think it makes them feel like they have a sense of worth, when all they have to do just do their job and be good at it...as long as Im attentive to the patients and nurses I can get praise all the day long even though thats not what Im there for but its nice every now and then since Nursing/Patient Care in general is a thankless job at times. Im going to school soon though cause some of these co-workers are getting on my nerves....j/k. But yeah thats' probably what it is...maybe.
I think it's partly because some people don't understand that a nurses role is more than just TASKS. As NAs here, we can do a lot of the tasks that nurses do, but we carry no professional responsibility for them. (we do have apersonal responsibility to our workplace). We do not have the legal duty of care for patients, and we have the luxury of "passing the buck" to the RN if we're not sure of something. An RN might do the same stuff as we do, but they also do much more, and, unlike some of my co-workers think, it's not just medications. I'm not saying I totally understand the RNs job, I just realise that it's way more complex than it seems.
People should just be proud of whatever role they play in patient care. I LOVE being a support worker, and I am proud of the difference I make every day. I do sometimes find myself guilty of not correcting a patient when they call "nurse!". Normally they just want something that I can do for them (and if they are desperate for the bathroom, they are not interested in hearing a speech about my job role!). But I do explain my role to them when they first get to the floor, I just think it is just easier for them to yell "nurse" rather than anything else!
I had this happen one time at a physician's office about 6 months ago where I was greeted by a medical assistant...I assumed that she was a nurse, because the secretary called her one and she answered the phone in my presence earlier and told the patient she was Dr. So and So's nurse.
To make conversation, I started chit-chatting about some of my labs and realized that she seemed unusually clueless..so I asked her if she was an RN or an LPN, and she said that she "didn't HAVE TO go to school because Dr. So and So trained her."
So, as she was taking my vitals, I said calmly, "you know, you should really be careful about telling someone you are a nurse if you are not...you could get into a lot of legal trouble because it is a protected title."
She laughed and said, "Well, gosh, who is going to care enough to do that?"
Without missing a beat, I said, "Someone like me...who is."
I told the doctor when I saw him.
The next time I went to the office, they were making a really BIG DEAL out of calling her a medical assistant.
I do get frustrated because its so hard for my pts to know who is the nurse and who is the cna and then you get a med passing cna on an acute floor who considers herself a nurse and its more confusing. I make an effort to clarify roles on rounds. When i go into rooms i shake hands and introduce us both. im your rn and so and so will be your cna tonight every single night. but if someone gets us mixed up I don't really care too much. they see us all as meeting their families needs and they don't get all the different levels. One other way i think its nice to clarify is on the board in the pts room.
I just have to say i went to a new dr yesterday and the MA clearly identified herself as an assistant to the dr and nothing else.
What about lpn's caliing themselves Rn? I know a lot that do but it doesn't make me angry. What makes me angry is when they try to justify doing it by saying"yeah but I know more than some rn's." Or "I do more work them theem,all they sit and do all day is paperwork."
Honestly, why would you even bring that up when it wasn't mentioned by the OP? I have NEVER, EVER heard an LPN claiming to be an RN. That would just be stupid.
I have NEVER in a million years heard of that. Not to say it doesn't exist. Most LPNs just call themselves a "nurse" period. Sorry, but this isn't a problem, at all, from what I have seen.
I agree. Never hear of that happening. I have heard some LPNs say "they know more than an RN", but these nurses obviously have self esteem and other issues to deal with. RNs have more education. Plain and simple.
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
. . .The difference is clear if you really ask them for more information, as someone previously said. I am frustrated when I talk to "Sally from Dr. Smith's office" (notice - doesn't claim to be a nurse but I am sure most people assume she is).
Sally: "We'll need to repeat that test in 3 months."
Me:"Why?"
Sally: "Well, because it is high."
ME: "Yes, it is barely out of the normal range. This is not something that changes quickly. Why would we redo it in 3 months?"
Sally: "Well, because it is high."
This is very instructive on several points. It is conceivable but unlikely she knew that the two things many states specify only a nurse can do are assessments and telephone triage and she knew that giving the specific number might generate a conversation verging on that.
The true villain in these cases is the doctor who wants to punt an annoying task to the MA and leaves the questions he should be answering for her to deal with. Even if the RN was tasked with that call, if the doctor initials a result and writes "have pt return in 3 months" I may not know the specific reason myself. Never, unless the patient has a severe cognitive deficit do they say, "oh okay thanks I"ll put that on my calendar" even for a teensy bit abnormal result unless the doctor has already told them to expect it. I just know that for me, if I get a slightly abnormal reading I'm starting to pay a lot closer attention to those Colonial Penn life insurance commercials.
Nurses can also fall victim to the "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing" rule - we had a really touchy EKG machine that diagnosed a healthy 25 year old female co-worker with something wonky involving the letters "MI" and ohh Lordy did she freak out! "I'm having a heart attack! Am I having a heart attack? Is my heart attacking? That machine said I had a heart attack! Doc B, are you sure I didn't have a heart attack?"
I work for a hospital system with about a dozen hospitals. To solve the problem of other healthcare workers calling themselves "nurses", everyone has to wear a bright yellow tag which extends beyond the length of your name tag. On the bottom of the tag, the person's title shows such as "RN", "LVN", "PCA" (Patient care tech / CNA), "TECH", "RT", etc. Problem solved!
I was a bit put off by a doctor in an office I went to. He referred to his MA as 'the nurse'.. she was NOT a nurse and it was very obvious. She had difficulty with very simple tasks (PPD was given but I could tell there was no liquid in the syringe and no bleb-I don't think she even knew how to aspirate the solution INTO the syringe), and no apparent knowledge of 'tests' she was conducting either, (respiratory test was administered totally wrong). I obviously told the doc about that one.. There were also NO name tags on anyone either. I honestly think it could have been intentional.. to operate under the guise that he has licensed nurses working for him when he really just has MA's, as they are cheaper to pay? But call them nurses so people don't know?
I was not impressed. I can't stand it either when MA's think they are equivocal to a nurse.
I have never ever in my years heard an LPN refer to themselves as an RN. Most LPN's I know are like me, proud of those 3 letters!! *And I will be just as proud once I finish school and pass boards and have the 2 letters!!*
I hear MA's calling themselves "nurse" all the time. It really irks my nerves! I used to work at a LARGE clinic where they started hiring MA's instead of LPN's because they could pay them less. Well now days when I go there, that seems to be all they have. I don't mind, well, actually in some cases I do. I refuse to take my children there. They don't give shots properly. Plain and simple. And its not just 1 that I have had experience with. Last year my daughter received her flu shot, just above her elbow. Yeah, I was NOT a happy camper and filed a complaint. Had I not been trying to hold her still and had seen where she was about to do it, I would have thrown a fit at that time. But... I have also worked with some VERY knowledgable MA's. No matter how smart they are, they should not refer to themselves as the nurse. Luckily where I work now ONLY hires LPN's and RN's.
In my state, the BON says that no one may sign their names as LPN or RN without actually holding that title. I don't know if there are any legal ramifications to just addressing onesself as "the nurse" as long as they are not signing their names as such.
Specializes in L&D; GI; Fam Med; Home H; Case mgmt.
I have never ever in my years heard an LPN refer to themselves as an RN. Most LPN's I know are like me, proud of those 3 letters!! *And I will be just as proud once I finish school and pass boards and have the 2 letters!!*
I hear MA's calling themselves "nurse" all the time. It really irks my nerves! I used to work at a LARGE clinic where they started hiring MA's instead of LPN's because they could pay them less. Well now days when I go there, that seems to be all they have. I don't mind, well, actually in some cases I do. I refuse to take my children there. They don't give shots properly. Plain and simple. And its not just 1 that I have had experience with. Last year my daughter received her flu shot, just above her elbow. Yeah, I was NOT a happy camper and filed a complaint. Had I not been trying to hold her still and had seen where she was about to do it, I would have thrown a fit at that time. But... I have also worked with some VERY knowledgable MA's. No matter how smart they are, they should not refer to themselves as the nurse. Luckily where I work now ONLY hires LPN's and RN's.
In my state, the BON says that no one may sign their names as LPN or RN without actually holding that title. I don't know if there are any legal ramifications to just addressing onesself as "the nurse" as long as they are not signing their names as such.
You raise a good point. Is the term "nurse" somehow legally tied to a licensed RN, LPN or LVN? (I'm seriously asking because I'm not sure). Or can any healthcare worker that "nurses" patients be referred to as a nurse? Nursing someone back to health can be done by anyone - family, HHA, etc. So I'm thinking the term "nurse" can be used interchangeably depending upon what the person's role is. I'm just sort of thinking out loud here, not setting policy, so don't freak out on me anyone.
Specializes in AA&I, research,peds, radiation oncology.
You raise a good point. Is the term "nurse" somehow legally tied to a licensed RN, LPN or LVN? (I'm seriously asking because I'm not sure). Or can any healthcare worker that "nurses" patients be referred to as a nurse? Nursing someone back to health can be done by anyone - family, HHA, etc. So I'm thinking the term "nurse" can be used interchangeably depending upon what the person's role is. I'm just sort of thinking out loud here, not setting policy, so don't freak out on me anyone.
Performing duties in the capacity of a licensed professional and signing off on them-This is on a totally different level than a loved one, church member, grandmother,etc. "nursing a loved one back to health.
whoa not reading all that, but i understand where you are coming from. i hear it the most from cna's or those that claim they are almost finished with nursing school when they haven't even gotten in the program. lol
"I'm having a heart attack! Am I having a heart attack? Is my heart attacking? That machine said I had a heart attack! Doc B, are you sure I didn't have a heart attack?" 
JDZ344
837 Posts
I think it's partly because some people don't understand that a nurses role is more than just TASKS. As NAs here, we can do a lot of the tasks that nurses do, but we carry no professional responsibility for them. (we do have apersonal responsibility to our workplace). We do not have the legal duty of care for patients, and we have the luxury of "passing the buck" to the RN if we're not sure of something. An RN might do the same stuff as we do, but they also do much more, and, unlike some of my co-workers think, it's not just medications. I'm not saying I totally understand the RNs job, I just realise that it's way more complex than it seems.
People should just be proud of whatever role they play in patient care. I LOVE being a support worker, and I am proud of the difference I make every day. I do sometimes find myself guilty of not correcting a patient when they call "nurse!". Normally they just want something that I can do for them (and if they are desperate for the bathroom, they are not interested in hearing a speech about my job role!). But I do explain my role to them when they first get to the floor, I just think it is just easier for them to yell "nurse" rather than anything else!