"but doctors are better than nurses"

mildred · Mar 5, 2006

good morning, the best answer i have always given is doctors care about the disease nurses care about the whole person. it has stopped any other comments about who is better in a nut shell.

pabby · Mar 5, 2006

i generally tell people that doctors and nurses are trained to do different jobs and that we work as a team, much like a baseball team. everyone isn't the pitcher, but the pitcher wouldn't be able to do his job without the rest of the teammates.

Angie O'Plasty · Mar 5, 2006

i generally tell people that doctors and nurses are trained to do different jobs and that we work as a team, much like a baseball team. everyone isn't the pitcher, but the pitcher wouldn't be able to do his job without the rest of the teammates.

:yelclap: :yeahthat:

pugmum · Mar 6, 2006

I work in a teaching hospital where the residents and experienced MDs depend on my ongoing assessments of our patients. We're a team. I do see my self as a medical professional. As nurses are expected to do more and more, and with expanding Advanced Practice options, the lines are becoming less distinct. I try to think like an MD when I'm reviewing orders--anticipating. I ask a lot of questions. I also try to educate MDs to think like nurses while they're writing orders. When I advocate for a patient, I am advocating for nurses also.
I've had doctors suggest that I go to medical school, which I take as a compliment and vote of confidence. The truth is, I don't want to have to study physics, O Chem, and calculus to do what I love, which is patient care. On the flip side, I've told doctors who are particularly thorough in their assessments and orders that they should have become nurses.
Nurses have more respect and responsibility than ever. I think the perception of nurses will shift even more when: 1) The pay rates continue to rise which will lead to 2) an increasingly talented and competetive pool of nursing school candidates and 3) more men entering the profession.
The other thing that needs to happen is a standardization of the profession, ie RN = bachelor's degree. After all, we all know that an MD means college + med school. If an MD could mean 2, 3 , or 4 years of school, it would sound like a quack profession.
Anyway I love nursing and medicine, and I wish doctors could do more of what nurses do, and that I could do more of what they do. Anything that would make it easier on the patients.

May I respectfully suggest that if you are truly advocating for nurses, you become a champion of nursing and promote the profession, and be a little less enthusiastic about blurring the lines. I agree very much that physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals should be working as an interdisciplinary team for our patients. We all have different roles and responsibilities; one role is not better than the other, merely different. You may like to think like an MD when reviewing orders, but I see this as a nursing responsibility, nothing more or less, and part of thinking "like a nurse". Could you explain why you take it as a compliment when a physician suggests you should go to medical school. Because you are "smart enough" to be a doctor? Personally, I would find this insulting - the perception that a nurse is a nurse because he or she does not have the intelligence to go to medical school. (I realize you mentioned you did not want to do the physics, and prefer patient care.)

I've told doctors who are particularly thorough in their assessments and orders that they should have become nurses.

Please...are you suggesting that only nurses can do a thorough assessent?

I am obviously way too cranky today...will climb off my soapbox now.

Mirai Kangofu · Mar 6, 2006

Hey, I'd be glad if more doctors acted like the ones on House. They draw their own labs, bring patients to procedures, take time to get to know them...

Haha, amen to that! Only in dramatized fantasies...

I also consider it insulting when told that I'm "too smart to be a nurse" or "If you're studying to be a nurse, you might as well be a doctor," becasue it insinuates that doctors are better than nurses, and that "settling" with nursing is tantamount to underachieving. Yes, doctors are more educated than most (as is anyone who goes for advanced degrees), but again, medicine is a different field than nursing. Nursing and medicine are like a Venn diagram, and nursing is not below medicine.

I too use the "Doctors cure diseases, nurses heal people," anecdote, and state that if all smart nurses became doctors, then the nursing shortage would turn into a nursing extinction.

BethAnnG · Mar 7, 2006

I am not out to bash doctors. I work now and have worked in the past with some great ones. But I'd rather have a good nurse than a good doctor any day. As nurses we have to know a great deal of what doctors know plus things that are exclusive to the art and science of nursing. We have to know what is worth calling a doc about and what's not. We have to know pathophys, pharmacology, procedures, and (last but not least) how to care about someone in the process. And we are a team. RNs don't do what doctors do, nor do they do what we do. RNs may not be trained to do neurosurgery, but I used to work with an MD who couldn't figure out how to get the powder and diluent together in a Solumedrol vial.

Mirai Kangofu · Mar 9, 2006

Today, someone gave me the "You're too smart to be a nurse," line after I told him the difference between mental retardation and cerebral palsy. I raised my eyebrows, stated that EVERY nurse knows that, and if he thinks that knowing about 1/1,000,000th of what every nurse needs to know automatically qualifies someone as too smart to be a nurse, he must have very little faith in the front line of the healthcare field. I laughed to show that no hard feelings were meant, but he seemed to get the point.

jyoung1950 · Mar 10, 2006

Hmm.....actually I've never heard that one. A hospital full of just doctors, caring for the patients. My, wouldn't they all be beating each other down trying to schedule surgeries and prescribe meds galore? The fancy equipment would never have a chance to cool down.
Their whole 'thing' is in curing. Very dramatic. Rush in for a few minutes, write some orders and get some tests - then their gone. Taking all the glory with them, by the way.
If we had a hospital without nurses, who would be 'caring' - taking off orders, fighting with pharmacy, tracking down the lab for the blood results that should have been back hours ago, hunting for bed linens to change poopy sheets,calling dietary for the third time requesting a special diet, medicating patients (especially in NH's) without name tags, racing to hang I.V.'s and blood products, running up and down halls to answer call lights,listening to all the gripes from administrators, managers, families, patients, staff etc??? Oh, and being ever so cheery while you are doing it. Have to provide good customer service ya know - no excuses for poor bedside manners. Or illegible handwriting either.
I could go on for hours, but you get the drift. The place wouldn't last a day. Not to mention where their salaries would be coming from. I'll be lucky to get a 3% yearly raise. Somehow don't think that would cut it with a M.D., do you?
Would be a dang interesting experiment though. I would absolutely piss my pants watching a day in the hospital run by physicians!!!

Not to mention how health costs would increase 2000%!

johnoe · Mar 15, 2006

I have met many doctors who couldn't put in an i.v. needle, doctors are not gods by choice. no patient wants a doctor who cannot cure him, so docter replaces god. of course there is a lot of differance in thinking you are, and beleiving it.

DaFreak71 · Mar 15, 2006

good morning, the best answer i have always given is doctors care about the disease nurses care about the whole person. it has stopped any other comments about who is better in a nut shell.

I'm not singling you out Mildred, as others have made this fallacious point, it just so happens that I'm responding to this one.

I've known plenty of doctors that care about the whole person, and I've had the misfortune to know several nurses that didn't get a flying crap about the whole person or even any part of the patient. The whole idea that a nurse is a caring person is getting tired. In an ideal world, everyone would care about everyone, but this isn't very realistic. By continuing to propagate the idea that nursing is a caring profession and medicine is a curing profession, we sell ourselves short. We deny that we have technical and medical knowlege at the same time we are denying that doctors have the ability (and desire) to truly help the patient. Care vs. Cure is an absurd arguement on the face of it because by curing, is that not showing care as well?

I think the main reason why nursing is continually compared to medicine is our own fault. We continue to assert that we are somehow morally superior to doctors because we "care" about the patient. But in the final analysis, what do you think the patient values more: having his/her disease cured or having someone to care about them? In terminal situations, I can easily see how one becomes more important than the other simply by virtue of there not being a possibility of a cure. But if I had my choice, I would opt for cure above care every time. I can get my emotional needs met by the people that love me, I don't need it from a nurse. I do, however, need the doctor to cure me of disease. What I am saying is that by continually asserting that nursing = caring and medicine = curing, we are drawing a line in the sand that leads one to ponder what one is more valuable. Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Can't we get to a place where we acknowledge that nurses are intellectually competent and have medical knowlege that saves/cures and at the same time that doctors are caring people who show their caring through curing? Nobody has a corner on the caring market. And if they did, I'd opt for curing...everytime.

ermen · May 3, 2009

Nurses are trained to care, doctors, to cure; both are valuable to the patient.

Chewie_123 · May 3, 2009

Hehe. Doctors taking over nursing jobs would be fun to watch. I could sell tickets! Just imagine a bunch of surgeons providing direct patient care on the floor... :)