Call yourself a Nurse?
Long post warning
I know this issue has come up before but I have a problem with an individual who is apparently doing the above, calling herself a Nurse when as far as I can see she's not.
The situation is complicated, I'm in the UK, though not British by birth, and this person is American, now I've 'lurked' here a bit and occasionally posted but I confess that I really don't always understand some of the abbreviations and distinctions made in the threads.
We both work for a private Company,in the UK, and in this role have no patient contact, which is why I haven't made a big deal of this before.
I'm part time in my private role and also work as a senior nursing sister in the NHS, and I will say that the company has been very good to me, they have been very flexible towards me as regards my days of work (I'm contracted to work two set days but their attitude is once I work the hours I'm contracted to they don't mind too much which days I work, I acknowledge that I am very fortunate in this and this is part of why I'm pi**ed off as I feel that she is conning them too)
There is also the issue that she claims (ok I was trying to be very good, but giving away gender isn't too bad is it?) anyhow she has on her CV that she served in the forces, which also really gets me. But if she is ever asked about it the story changes each time and has actively denied been in the forces to another member of staff. (This is a sore point as my partner is in the forces and served in Iraq but that's another story)
Anyway to get to the points this person claims that
1.She was active in the armed forces
2.That she is a nurse
In her CV she has that she was a "Health Care Administrator" and claims that this means she's a nurse? Is this right?
Nowhere does she give where she gained her RN? Now I worked hard for my RN qualification, but if I'd had to pay to do my training it like you do in the USA, I'd have it tattooed on my forehead.
She has stated on numerous occasions that she's 'the same as a nurse ' but that the UK won't recognize her as such.
Now I've worked with a lot of nurses who trained in other countries (Spanish, French, Swedish, Philippine, Irish, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Aus NZ as well as some from the US) and ALL of them say that it is a lot easier to be recognised in the UK that in the US, and a lot of the nurses from the Philippines come here to work while studying for the NCLEX.
As regards nursing education in the UK, you can either go the Diploma or degree route; at the end of each you are still a RN. The reason most nurses go the Dip route is that it has an attached bursary, yes, not only do you not have to pay tuition but the government also give you approx £5305 a year/ $10435 a year to train as a nurse.
To do degree level you still come out with an RN but also with student loans, so most so the Dip route and once they decide the area they want to stay in, do top up courses in order to specialise in that area
Anyway this person has told other staff that
-I cannot be a nurse because she's looked at my CV and I 'only' have a diploma in nursing.
-That my partner can't have been in Iraq, because she's seen him and doesn't recognise him. I mean really?
-Has given medical advice to other members of staff that is frankly dangerous, some of them have got annoyed with me because I say I can not diagnose, I advise you to go to your GP, the reply is 'but ***** said I should ..............'To which I bite my tongue and say I can only say I would not do that personally and would see my GP
-Has confused basic medical terminology, now we all have bad days but bad weeks? But recently spent hours claiming that Atrial Fibrillation and Atrial Flutter were the same thing? When another member of staff asked me to 'adjudicate' she then claimed that in the US the two terms are interchangeable, I find that difficult to believe.
Now we review info from drug trials, if you had the choice of giving / taking a drug that has the possible side effect of A. Fibrillation or a drug that has the same outcomes but has the possible side effect of A. Flutter which would you choose?
-She appears to recognize that in calling her self a nurse that she is doing wrong. In that I started work at the company a few months after her, until then she was claiming to various members of the team that she was an RN waiting to register in the UK and once she did she was going to start looking for work at the local hospital. (You do not need a nursing qualification to hold my current post, so I didn't really make anything of me being a nurse when I started mainly to avoid been asked questions/ told histories about colleagues medical issues.) How it came up was that one of her team trying to be helpful (and get her to leave) told her what my other job was and suggested that I could help her with getting her registration and finding a job.
This is when her story changed from I'm a nurse to I'm the same as a nurse. And then claimed to various colleagues that they had misunderstood her and that they didn't understand the difference between US and UK nursing
As I said at the start this is a long post, but what I really want to know is does having a
'Bachelor of Science Honours in Health Services Administration'
mean that you are a RN?
To be honest at this point she is not only giving nurses a bad name but really giving US nurses and their training a bad name.