I got into it with two nurses at work today and I'm wondering if I was wrong to handle the situation the way I did. I'm not an RN, but I work as an intern at a hospital that recruits BSN candidates who are very near to graduation, the objective being that you will continue to work for them as an RN after you pass state boards. Being an intern is almost like being an LPN (except that we don't have a license and didn't want to be bothered with the NCLEX PN since we're already prepping for the NCLEX RN). So, we get paid less than an LPN even though we do pretty much the same things they do (under the direct supervision of an RN, of course).
The situation is that the hospital is very short of nurses aides, and at the last unit staff meeting we were told that we have to work as a team to do total patient care on everybody until they fill all the vacant positions. I personally don't see anything wrong with that because, at least in my humble opinion, nursing is all about total patient care anyway. But there are a few nurses who think they are better than to help a patient with hygiene or toileting, or even eating. They want the aides to do EVERYTHING, and if there is no aide available some of these nurses are quite comfortable to let the patient wait for a very long time laying in feces, or vomit, or until the patient's food gets cold and nasty, until an aide becomes available to do it. I'm not talking about nurses who are genuinely busy with work, just a few lazy nurses period. Don't get me wrong, the majority of the RNs I work with are really awesome people who I believe to be among the best nurses out there, but as you know there are always a few bad ones trying to ruin things.
Things started out real busy today but the docs came thru and gave orders for many of their patients to be moved out of intensive care to tele/step-down and med surg. By early afternoon about 2/3 of the patients were gone and we were sitting there twiddling our thumbs for hours because we hardly had any patients. The charge nurse didn't want to float any of the RNs out because a number of post-ops would be soon coming up from PACU and the ER was getting ready to send people up to us as well. I commented to one of the nurses aides that it had been a really slow day (I'm not exaggerating when I said that for a few hours most of us were sitting around with absolutely nothing to do). But before the words were even out of my mouth, one of the nurses said to me that things seem slow to us because we're only aides, and all we do is basic patient care, that we have no idea what "real nursing" is all about because of all the charting and follow-ups, and reports, etc that RNs have to do. Then she proceed to tell me that I have no idea what patient care is until I finish with school and become a "real nurse". I took offense to that because I do far more patient care on all her patients than she ever does.
But she didn't stop there. She began talking to another nurse about how going to nursing school nowadays means nothing because of all these incompetent new nurses she's seen. Each time she opened her mouth her comments got more and more personal, until it became obvious that she was talking about me. This woman is criticizing my education even though neither herself nor her friend ever went to college! This is BS on so many levels. First of all, since when is basic patient care NOT a part of "real nursing"? And why do some RNs have to be so condescending towards nursing assistants who are helping them to take care of their patients? Wiping butts, giving baths, and feeding a patient may not be the most glamorous things about nursing, but they are just as important to the patient as taking orders from a physician or passing meds. I went off on her BIG TIME. I'm normally not the type of person who likes to make a scene anywhere but somebody was eventually going to have to assist this woman with an attitude adjustment, and since she came swinging at me, I figured that the honor was mine.
