Okay, one of my pet peeves (among several in the healthcare field) is the superiority complex doctors tend to think they should have over nurses.
I'd like to hear other nurses experiences with this subject matter.
How many nurses believe doctors are superior to them?
How many nurses continue to think they are not just as important to the patients healthcare process as the doctors, therefore "cowtow" to doctors when they speak?
How many nurses are afraid of doctors....and why?
When will nurses STOP being afraid of doctors?
When will nurses begin to see themselves along with doctors as two members of the patients healthcare team, and not feel subordinate to the doctors?
Do you experience a difference with the new female docs today who think they have to assert themselves for fear we will not recognize them as doctors or confuse them with being nurses?
I don't know about you guys, but they owe me respect therefore they will give it to me. I started with the yes sir no sir stuff after school. It doesn't work. If you empower them, they will try to dominate. It's nature. No more Dr. stuff unless I'm near a pt. If you make it Jim, Tony...It brings them down to eye level. Stop the I'm sorry to wake you sir - crap. I'm up at that time of the night nobody is sorry for me. If they are on call it's their job to be up. If they bark at you get right back in their faces. I can't count the number of MD butts I've saved so far because they have ordered something wrong, something inappropriate, or something they shouldn't have...
Pt's. and families are the same way. They help give the Dr's. their god complexes. Pt's. don't seem to understand that if they we're alone in the room with an MD. The Dr. would watch them die as they're barking out orders to the wall. It's only because my peers and I are in the room that they might walk out alive. 99% of Doc's can't even start a line. They owe us respect - demand it!
Oh yah, quit giving up your chairs to them. It's called the Nurses Station. If you think after 8-12 hours of busting my butt without a lunch, I'm giving up my chair to them you need to put the crack pipe down now.
Speculating........you are my kind of nurse! :kiss You shall now be known as "The Fact Machine". :chuckle
I don't think that Doctors and Nurses are equal. They know more than us, have spend more time in school than us, and make more money than us.
That said let me also say that I am not afraid of doctors. If I have something to say I'll say it. I will call them at 2 am sunday to let them know that their patient is really sick and needs help now. I do not take any crap from them. But seeing as they are doctors, I always adress them Sir, and I am very respectfull to them, even when I am voicing my opinion that what they are doing is wrong. If nurses were equal to nurses, why don't we all run around with Rx pads in our hand, curing diseases. We do our parts, Doctors do theirs. They are higher up than nurses.
PS: Unless of course you have the pleasure of being an NP
Doctors don't "cure" diseases they treat them.
Do they address you as sir or ma'am when they speak to you?
Doctors know more than us about medicine, but we know more than them about nursing. We are the ones at the actual bedside monitoring and observing the patiens.
I don't think that docs are superior to me - but I don't think doctors and nurses are equal either. Superior implys that they are better than me - they are not. They are more educated than I am. But if I wanted to be an MD, I would have gone to medical school. We perform different functions for the patient - therefore we are not equal.
Please explain how you are both not inferior but not equal to someone? Yes we do very different jobs but none less important than the other. Once again I make my point that nurses are at the bedside and see changes in the patients whereas dcotors make rounds.
Of course MDs are "equal" to nurses. Just because they have less experience with patients, I see no reason to look down on them! And, the trauma of their early lives as upper class males with rich fathers who drove them into the field; stunting their interpersonal skills and shortening their effective youths,saddling them with tremendous debt for the rest of their natural lives in a sea of governmental paperwork should cause us to show some compassion. The one day that they see that they have a vacuous wife, three kids in college majoring in body art-each with a new car, a thirty year mortgage,a blonde bimbo mistress with a taste for diamonds and a big mouth ,student loans, 50K overhead per month with the new office,a couple depositions for the grand jury looming,a heavy scotch habit and only the potential for a few more years of slavery until stroke,heart attack or alzheimers claims them and they will be patients under us AND medicare....well of course they are going to be prone to temper fits......poor things.
At 67 I will still be a here, turning watering and feeding yet another generation of "great healers" wondering whatever became of the good old days when social security gave out more than my poor old tired back does. As their red rimmed eyes gaze up at me from their sickbeds, and I find that one last,lonely vein to access for their morphine PCA, they are gonna mumble quietly and almost imperceptibly.....thank GOD for nurses. :)
Of course MDs are "equal" to nurses. Just because they have less experience with patients, I see no reason to look down on them! And, the trauma of their early lives as upper class males with rich fathers who drove them into the field; stunting their interpersonal skills and shortening their effective youths,saddling them with tremendous debt for the rest of their natural lives in a sea of governmental paperwork should cause us to show some compassion. The one day that they see that they have a vacuous wife, three kids in college majoring in body art-each with a new car, a thirty year mortgage,a blonde bimbo mistress with a taste for diamonds and a big mouth ,student loans, 50K overhead per month with the new office,a couple depositions for the grand jury looming,a heavy scotch habit and only the potential for a few more years of slavery until stroke,heart attack or alzheimers claims them and they will be patients under us AND medicare....well of course they are going to be prone to temper fits......poor things.
At 67 I will still be a here, turning watering and feeding yet another generation of "great healers" wondering whatever became of the good old days when social security gave out more than my poor old tired back does. As their red rimmed eyes gaze up at me from their sickbeds, and I find that one last,lonely vein to access for their morphine PCA, they are gonna mumble quietly and almost imperceptibly.....thank GOD for nurses. :)
and I take this to mean all women as well. Thus all men and women are created equal: before God and before our US government. With certain unalienable rights...etc etc.l
Yeah, docs have more education than I...but that does not make them better than me.....JMHO and true of docs AND nurses....
Yes, I know, 'popularity contests' and man's rules aside....but I am ruling on principal. I love this country and what it stands for: even if man's inhumanity to man rules (some days.) :stone
Specializes in NICU, L&D, OB, Home Health, Management.
:) To Mattsmam - you are RIGHT!!! Regardless of education, net worth or any other parameters - we ARE all equal. Would this even be up for a vote if it was not docs vs nurses, but men vs women or white vs black or any other group? Of course not!
:roll To Lisaloulou - your post was incredible. And oh so true.:roll
I have no respect for doctors who think they are better than anyone else, and who make rude or condescending comments to the nursing staff. Unfortunately, they do not care if they don't get respect. Those docs may have more education than I do, but are very ignorant of human nature.
A doc who is human, who will answer questions, and not belittle the nurse for asking, will do much better on my unit.
Our hospital wants docs called Dr. so-and-so, but the younger ones much prefer to be called by their first name, after all, they consider themselves co-workers.
Ha! I think the "education" argument is a hoot. It got me thinking...if doctors should be called "sir" or "ma'am" because they have more education, should I start asking the nurses who have a Diploma or Associates degree to call me ma'am because I have a BSN? :chuckle
I mean...what difference does experience make anyway? Hee Hee!
Seriously though, it seems like most of us here would agree that physicians and nurses are part of the same team and should have mutual respect for each other.
is the superiority complex doctors tend to think they should have over nurses.
stressednurse
131 Posts
sbic, well stated!!!!!!!
NOw everyone else, go for it, grab it and RUN.
Love you, all of you. Wonderful group