Just a Cog

[blondy2061h]

Recently, the department I work for at my hospital received a significant national award for excellent patient outcomes. The email was sent out to the entire hospital announcing that we had received this award. The director of patient care replied all saying what wonderful medical care the physicians have provided to get us to this point. The medical director replied all that obviously the head physician of this department gets most of the credit, but the patient care director also receives credit for "providing ancillary resources to support the physicians in their excellent care." Guess nurses are too insignificant to even mention? The director that sits in an office allocating resources is definitely way above the nurses at the bedside monitoring assessments, accurately administering all of the hundreds of meds, maintaining the drips, forcing even the most unmotivated patient out of bed to ambulate, turning at positioning the septic patient to prevent further injury while they recover. We're just cogs in their transplant machine.

[anon456, BSN, RN]

Yes! And, we are disposable. We had a very drastic change made to our unit by administration. Our unit had high patient satisfaction scores at the time, great teamwork and a very high safety record. I am assuming the change was made for financial reasons. The change required the nurses to train to a different specialty of nursing. They were not asked. They were told. Those who refused to train were invited to leave. They did not get assistance in being relocated to other units if they were interested in this option. We lost about half our staff, and administration still continued to insist on this change. Now we have float nurses in place of core staff for the moment, have dismal patient satisfaction scores, and patients are complaining about the lack of continuity and consistency of care. And when we get bad scores, guess who gets blamed for it? The nurses.

[Lev, MSN, RN, NP]

If you come here to complain, you're preaching to the choir. Take your original post, stop by TruthAboutNursing.com and pick up some stats, and send your thoughts to the local news desk and the health reporter at your nearest big-city newspaper. CC your hospital PR office unsigned. Bet you'll get a call, especially if your note includes the idea that you'd like to be anonymous because you fear retribution.

Awesome idea!!!

[nursel56]

Awesome idea!!!

I'm with Grn Tea and Lev. An organization who has nothing to feel ashamed of doesn't mind the spotlight. They're just banking on controlling the spotlight selectively with nobody speaking up.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Nah, not trite. Very true. I think part of the reason this annoys me is that we're actively in the process of renewing magnet. Our site visit is this winter. Makes me insane the level of bull involved in it. Before magnet ever got involved, nurses would have been recognized. Now, more than ever, it's as if we're at war with the physicians. At least my nurse manager sent us (but not the whole hospital) an email thanking us for the care we provide and telling us we should be proud.

Your medical director should have sent out an email recognizing (and thanking) nursing as well. The fact that he did not speaks volumes. Perhaps the Magnet Committee should be informed of this oversight.

[Susie2310]

My family member complimented a specialist in the hospital on the quality of the nurses (the nurses my family member had had up until that point were young, conscientious, and caring, one particular nurse especially so). I greatly appreciated the specialist coming in, and the care this person provided my family member with in an emergency situation, but I was taken aback when the physician, after graciously receiving the compliment, replied "We had some problems with the nurses before and we had to replace them." Then I remembered a mass recruitment day for new nursing staff some time before.

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

Interestingly, when I came back to work all of the magnet site visit signs were up with the contact information for comments about nursing on them. I definitely plan on contacting them (anonymously) about this (and a variety of other issues).

[Susie2310]

My family member complimented a specialist in the hospital on the quality of the nurses (the nurses my family member had had up until that point were young, conscientious, and caring, one particular nurse especially so). I greatly appreciated the specialist coming in, and the care this person provided my family member with in an emergency situation, but I was taken aback when the physician, after graciously receiving the compliment, replied "We had some problems with the nurses before and we had to replace them." Then I remembered a mass recruitment day for new nursing staff some time before.

This is an afterthought, but I remember that the physician also said "We don't have these problems with the doctors. The doctors are very good."

I wish the physician had elaborated on what the "problems" with the nurses were.

Thinking back to the OP, and to other comments on this thread and on AN, and to what I witness for myself and have experienced, I see these behaviors of minimizing, dismissing, and discrediting the contributions of nurses as efforts to reduce the threat that nurses pose to physicians and health care businesses (authority and incomes). I see these behaviors as efforts at weakening the public's confidence in nurses; as saying "We don't really need nurses; their contributions are not significant." These are efforts at keeping nurses down. I think nurses (particularly experienced nurses, who are not afraid to question physician orders, and to take necessary actions to ensure appropriate care for their patients), are perceived as a threat. The remedy to such a threat is to take away the threat's power. Nurses are also a threat because they speak out about patient care, i.e. on public web sites such as this one. Nurses are a big threat, and it doesn't help that they are voted the most trusted profession. So, yes, there is a lot of effort and intention that goes into keeping nurses "just cogs."

[djh123]

I'm not surprised at all! In my previous career, a co-worker and I busted our butts on something that had little to nothing to do with our expertise - we were just thrown into an unusual project. We were proud of what we produced, and a manager went to a big meeting and presented the results of what we came up with... and we weren't even mentioned.

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

Wow! That's awful!

[NsugaBuga]

I def. Would have said something. I'm a quiet one but I wait my turn to speak (when one of the big people pulls me to the side). My administration hated me for this reason.