Do you ever wish people didn't know you were a nurse?

Nurses General Nursing

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I'm just wanting to gripe a bit. I'm a very private person and don't make it a practice to broadcast info. about myself all over the place.

I'm speaking specifically right now of going to the doctor. Maybe I went a little wild since I've gotten health insurance, but I've been to several doctors (a psychiatrist, a neurologist and an obstetrician) and every doctor I have been to see knows I'm a nurse. I wonder if it is protocol for the secretary or MA to write "THIS PATIENT IS A NURSE" on the front of charts before they are given to the doctor? I only filled it out on the new patient forms where they ask your employer and profession and I know the docs and nurse's don't read that. I even went as far as not filling this info. in when I went to the last doctor (ob/gyn) but I was called back to fill the info. in!

Now this isn't necessarily earth-shaking, but at the same time, every single doctor has questioned me about my profession, where I got my training, and what I do at my job. I won't make any secret that I am not exactly proud to tell the doctor ,"I went to Excelsior College which is basically a through the mail school and my degree is an associate degree." I have decided the next time someone asks I will tell them I am a Rhodes scholar and got my nursing degree in England, or something. Furthermore, they expect me to know things because I am a nurse. The psychiatrist is especially bad to drill me with questions and say, "You are an RN! You should know this!" Hey, doc, I'm mental as it is, you shouldn't pressure me!!!

No, just because we have RN after our name doesn't mean people should assume and expect us to know everything!

Family and neighbors are as bad. I was recently talking on the phone to my mom who lives out of state. She said, " I wish you were here to look at my side, it's red and scaly, it might be shingles." :stone

A family friend said he had two bumps near his rectum, would I look at them...:barf02: NO I WON'T!!!

I don't know, maybe I'm burned out and the holidays are starting to get to me.

As I laid in my bed 2 hours post op after having my gall-bladder removed (open) the daughter of the woman in the next bed (who was near death due to brain cancer) said to me "I am wore out, since your a nurse would you keep an eye on mama and call me if I need to come back?" That was at 4:00 pm; at midnight a woman came into my room (my new private room) and asked if I would come and try to start her sisters IV! But the absolute most astounding request came from the house supervisor who came into my room to ask if I would watch the desk and "just answer call lights" while a code was going on. :D

You have got to be kidding! I'm just horrified. Is this on the floor you normally work on?! I would write lots of letters....that's just awful. I hope you said no to all of those requests! If you did any of those things you deserve a free hospital stay and an apology.

Specializes in Government.
I hear this one regularly: I've got four semesters(or a year, or whatever) to my RN. And it is the same story years later.

Me, too! I've heard that hundreds of times over my nursing career.

My problem is a little different. I'm the only nurse in my state who does what I do. I take medically impaired drivers off the road ...dementia, diabetes, you name it. I have an office and regular hours (I do not have on-call responsibilities). People who have ignored Aunt Edna's driving for 20 years get a wild hair and try to track me down at home, church...you name it. I've had my home number changed. When I get to work Monday morning, my e-mail and voice mail are filled with people trying to reach me Saturday night at 10 PM. Even though my message indicates what their options are.

I never mind if people have a question after church or whatever but I do ask that they leave me alone in the pew. I deflect all questions that are not related to my current job.

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

dh and i are both nurses, and no one we know bothers us about nursing stuff -- well, with the exception of my father. he called one night about 1 am from 2000 miles away and said "i'm having a little chest pain, and i'm short of breath. what should i do?"

"call an ambulance, dad."

an hour later: "i'm in the er, and they hooked me up to this machine with a tv screen that shows my heart beat. i'm having one little skinny beat and one big fat beat and one little skinny beat and one big fat beat. they want me to go to the icu. what should i do?"

"go to the icu, dad."

at 8am: "hi. this is your mom. they want to put a breathing tube in dad, but i know he wouldn't want to be kept alive on machines. what should i do?"

"let me talk to the nurse, mom."

you all get where this is going, don't you? the earliest flight home was at 10pm. i got there at 8am the next morning. dad was on 100% high flow and convinced he was in prison. mom was resisting intubation. as soon as i walked onto the unit, i was greeted by mom ("this is my daughter who works in icu") , two nurses, and an rt saying "thank god you're here." i've never been as ecstatic to see a family member who was medical as those staff members were to see me! i spent five minutes trying to talk to dad, then asked them to intubate him. the doctors were thrilled to see me, too!

i generally try not to be obnoxious about it, but letting the staff know that i'm an icu nurse lets them know what kind of detail they can go into and what sorts of terms they can use. (try asking about dad's ejection fraction without letting anyone know you're a nurse!) since my mother had already told everyone she encountered that her daughter was a nurse, there wasn't any keeping it secret anyway.

I seriously think the employees in doctor's offices treat people differently according to their occupational status. I think they assume that the convenience store clerk is less-educated and has lower occupational prestige than the physicist, and therefore treats the two patients differently. I wouldn't be surprised if they spoke to the plumbers and janitors more slowly than they did to the lawyers and college professors.

I agree. I went to see a NP when my dr was on vacation and she knew that I was an aide. Suddenly she's talking in these big words and I'm nodding my head but inside I'm racking my brain trying to remember what my diagnosis means and tx. When she admitted me to the hospital from her office I overheard her on the phone say "you know Elizabeth, she's an aide on med/surg." Ahhhhh!!!! I want to be treated like a pt, not a nurse or an aide. When you're a pt in the place where you work I feel that you get preferential tx. Which is good for me, but I want all pts to get the tx I receive.

Also doesn't help that there's only one hospital in the county so you see and know all the dr's and NP well. Thank God my dr can differeniate btw seeing him as a paying pt in his office and seeing him on the floor. Now, there has been times he's pulled me in an empty room and asked me what's wrong, telling me I look like crap. He kindly offered to write me a prescription(refill)- chronic UC and Crohn's so he knows me well. That I appreciate.

I'm on both sides of the fence too. Sometimes it's a good thing for them to know - like my dentist and my md are very into trusting or wanting my opinion when I go in for something or if I want a test done, they do it. But everytime I have had to be hospitalized and an IV started - which has been many times by the way - once the nurse knows I'm a nurse, they miss the stick. And I don't care those things HURT!!!!!!! even a 22 hurts!! It happens every time!!!! also I get those family phone calls where I wouldn't mind giving advice but they always ask something I can't answer like "what does it mean that I have 2 little white spots on the end of my tongue" or what the correct dose is of some new med I haven't even heard of yet. It's never something I know and I have nursed in several areas and consider myself a smart person. It's embarassing really.

Just tonight my best friend told me that her newborn niece was found to have an irregular heartbeat on her one-month checkup. I said "Wow." And she said "So....what is causing it?" Darned if I know. And I told her that.

Specializes in NICU, ER, OR.

I dont announce it, because I dont want people to think I am bragging, or trying to get special treatment, or think I am a know it all. I will say I am if asked, though. On occasion, it slips by, and people give me simple instructions, in lay terms, and I politely listen and thank them. My husband asks me..."Why dont you tell them you are a RN, that you know that allready?" I just cant, I feel so silly saying it, like who cares? I dont know...maybe I am the extreme on this one!!!

My moms oncologist knows, however, because thats too important, and I want to know all, and I wanted him to know I understand everything he will tell me.

Specializes in NICU, ER, OR.
I hear this one regularly: I've got four semesters(or a year, or whatever) to my RN.

And it is the same story years later.

I heard this one on the subway the other day:

woman, to a man in scrubs: What do you do for work?

man in scrubs: I am a nursing assistant.

woman: Oh, now what kinds of things do you do?

man: I do everything a nurse does, besides pass out medication

:uhoh3: :uhoh3: :uhoh3: :uhoh3:

Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Momment I open mouth, kids, DH or especially my PARENTS will inform any doctor/medical staff in 5 foot range that I'm an RN.... learned to use it to MY advantage.

Yes, I dread telling people I am a nurse. So much so that when I had to go to the ER once, I decided not to tell them that. They didn't ask and I didn't tell. Long story short, when physician came in to explain what he thought was going on (it was cardiac related, and I used to be a cardiac nurse) he explained things in nice detail, I loved it. Then a family member spilled the beans on me and the ER doctor got mad at me!! He said he must have sounded foolish to an RN with his simplified explanation. I told him I liked the explanation, cause otherwise I would have gotten nothing from him.

They always think you know everything and don't bother to tell you.

Also, people in general think we are paid alot higher than we really are. They think we are rich. ha And our jobs are piece of cake. Yeah, right!

They also think RN's don't have to do anything "dirty". Not!!

I don't mind people asking me advice, but there is a limit to what I know.

Men think we are "good solid paychecks", applies to male nurses the other way around. Targets. Want "nursemaids".

On a positive side, I do get respect for my profession, especially from older people. Guess all above goes with the territory, but it has made me aware of how society catagorizes people and treats them accordingly.

I guess we all do that and do not realize it sometimes. I try not to.

Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.

It can backfire, when my dad had his final heart attack my mom had trouble getting them to listen to her because the hospital docs were freaked out since my sister is a NICU nurse, I was medsurg at the time, my other sister's a lawyer. They insisted on doing everything they thought possible even if it was likely to be futile. Horrible 6 weeks.

On the other hand, when my dh had CA, and had to go in from home, my docs usually had me write most of the admit orders since I knew all his meds and routines (central line, gastric suction line, J tube, etc.). They just wrote the treatments for what he was getting admitted for :)

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