Overheard this phone conversation yesterday between my Dad and his sister, my aunt:
Dad: "Oh, she's not a nurse any more." .... "Noooo, she hasn't been seeing patient's for a long time. She works in an office for an insurance company."...."No, has not been in a hospital for YEARS, she is in administration. Nothing to do with nursing at all".
WHAT??!!??
Can't believe this came from my Dad (who very respectfully got reamed a new butt hole by your's truly). Unfortunately, this is the perception of John Q Public that nurses who specialize in case management, utilization review, quality management and research - any of us in specialities that do not occur in the clinical setting are not "real" nurses.
So, I ended up going into my explanation of how YES I AM STILL A NURSE in the office setting. How, as a case manager and utilization review nurse, I would impact HIM as a patient without him even being aware of my intervention, planning, evaluation and assessment based on discussions with his physician and the insurance company or the payor source. That I still function as a patient advocate and still talk to patient's directly over their care.
After all of that, he says, "yeah, but that's still not really nursing."
FINE.
Later, Dad cut his finger while slicing some potatos. He said, "Hey, can you put a bandaid on this for me?"
I said, "Gee, Dad, I can't. I'm no longer a REAL NURSE and work in an office so I can only provide you a PAPER CLIP. How's that?"
He stuck up his first three fingers and told me to read between the lines. Dad's a hoot.
