Hi Beth:
I believe you submitted a recent article about Safe Patient/Nurse Ratios in this country. I have been a nurse for about one year and a half and I am appalled by what I have observed with the untenable and unsafe patient/nurse ratios healthcare employers are demanding nurses work with, BUT, I am even more FRUSTRATED and DISGUSTED with the TOTAL LACK OF UNITY among nurses when it comes to speaking in one voice to employers about this.
They would rather run to the bathroom and cry or ***** and moan in private never having the guts to unite and square off with the managements responsible for creating unsafe conditions for the sake of profit. I am a male nurse....you ladies always tout this spirit of "Teamwork" on the floors yet I have never in my life witnessed the amount of undermining and backstabbing that exists among nurses.
Before we can begin to force change on healthcare employers we have to take ownership of our failure to unite.Ladies. please stop all the petty politics among yourselves! Let's all come together as one body and push our legislators for change!! We are in the millions and we are in demand!! That is power!!
Dear Male Nurse Disgusted with Female Nurses,
The female experience is very different from the male experience, my friend. You are operating in the largely female world of nursing, and it probably feels very foreign to you. But as women, this is our world and we know it well.
You believe we are petty and fight among ourselves rather than uniting and speaking up to management. Uniting and speaking up to management as one is male behavior. Female behavior is more divisive and it has kept us down as a profession. You're right, the nursing profession is really not built on strength or unification.
But there's a reason for this behavior. As a male, you would not know this as a lived experience.
Female Conditioning
Females are conditioned to envy each other, not to trust each other, and to compete with each other. Females compare themselves to other females all their lives. Girls compare themselves to Barbie, to the pretty girls, to the girls boys like best, to the cheerleaders. To every other girl.
Women are taught to be helpless when they're not, act stupid when they're smart, not be hungry when they're starving, and to remain passive they're angry.
Females are called the "b" word for being assertive and considered to be more feminine when they are "sweet". It's a dichotomy of expectations.
The dichotomy is everywhere. Look at popular movies about mean girls.
Being direct and straightforward is not how women are brought up to communicate whatsoever. Saying what we need is less important than meeting other's needs.
Meanwhile, boys are taught to stick together, in the army, on the football team. You rarely hear doctors criticize other doctors. Even when a patient goes to see a doctor with a condition that was mishandled by another provider, the response is more along the lines of "Well, let's move forward from here".
By contrast, nurses are hard on each other. Nurses can be quick to blame other nurses. As females, we expect perfection from ourselves...and each other.
State boards of nursing, made up of nurses, are notoriously hard on nurses as compared to doctors' governing boards.
There's another reason for your observations about female behavior.
Men Rule
It's still largely a male-dominated world. Men have the power. Look at the recent "Time's Up" issue. Even in liberal Hollywood, men have the power. Hospital boards are largely male. Hospital CEOs are largely male while CNOs are largely female.
It's a tough but true reality.
Even in nursing, a traditionally female occupation, when men become nurses they are often viewed as more qualified. It's no secret that men in nursing make more than women.
Self-Value
But we women have very special qualities. Intuition, compassion. Empathy. We are nurturers. When we focus on those unique gifts and collaborate together, instead of competing with each other, we are our most powerful selves.
No Excuses
This is not to say these explanations are excuses. Excuses are for people who don't take responsibility.
We are a force to be reckoned with once we take responsibility and come together. There are over 3 million nurses in the United States. We act as if we only have a rake when we actually have a bulldozer in the garage. We have enormous ability to bring about change.
How do we rally the masses? I don't know. Nurses do unite in outrage, as in Show Me Your Stethoscope. But there is an apathy around bringing about political change. The nursing profession itself is not unified by the American Nurse's Association (ANA). Some would say the ANA is beholden to the American Hospital Association (AHA). The AHA is a powerful lobby.
For whatever reason, it is time to stand up, stand together, and speak up. There is a grassroots movement that is dedicated to legislating nurse-patient ratios. It's the Nurses Take DC organization.
If every nurse reading this would make a call to their legislator, or write an email- it will make a difference!
Easily find out who your legislators are and make a call.
Write a letter to support H.R. 2392 and S. 1063 Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2017 legislative bills. Legislators respond to topics based on the number of phone calls and mail from their constituents.
Please read Mandated Nurse-Patient Ratios and share it and this article on social media. Use hashtags #NursesTakeDC and #allnursesSTRONG
SpankedInPittsburgh, DNP, RN
1,847 Posts
WOW!!! Where do I start? I've been following this thread since its inception and part of me has been afraid to say anything because I'm a guy. It's clear that as things stand us Nurses stand no chance against a unified team of management that likes things the way they are. Short staffing saves them money. A 1:8 nurse to patient ratio is cheaper than a 1:4 nurse to patient ratio in the short term and all American business (and make no mistake that's what heathcare is) cares about is its next quarterly profit and loss statement.
So how do you get nurses to keep accepting the unacceptable? Well in this case they don't have to do anything. We've done it for them by squabbling amongst ourselves like children. We need to unite and talk about the mechanisms of how to do that. I think a good place to start is this war of the sexes nonsense. I'm a male nurse and I don't think my member ever got me a raise. All my nurse managers, their bosses and the head nurse in the hospital I work are and have been women. Have I got more raises than some of the women I work with? Yep!!! Why? I get more raises because I aggressively fight for them every rating period. You want me to keep being the steady daylight charge in a busy ER give me more money!!! You want me to get my BSN so you can get magnet, get certified, do extra duties, come in on my off days.... are all attached to cash because at the end of the day that's why I go to work. Some (certainly not all by any stretch of the imagination) women that I have worked with accept pats on the head, little certificates and dumb stories about how "grateful" bosses are for their contribution but no raise. In my world work gratitude comes in the form of a bigger check which is why they call it work. I'm not particularly sure that's a masculine opinion but its mine. The same goes for horrible working conditions. I've been in horrible jobs & I've moved on. Many don't they stay and play some ridiculous martyr role (once again this is not a trait determined by genitalia in my experience).
This whole female conditioning thing? I have no doubt it's valid. However, these theories have been around since my first sociology class which was 35 years ago. If we have insight into a condition and do nothing about then referencing it simply creates an excuse for continued poor behavior. It's would be like the alcoholic who in insists on continued drinking to awful effect using the excuse "I can't help myself I'm an alcoholic". If this feminine dynamic is a fact what is to be done about it? Saying the Donkey is in a ditch is not really that helpful but getting the SOB out is.
Personally I think this has less to do with male / female roles and much more to do with how people look at nursing. To me nursing is a job. My patients have a right to excellent care and 100% effort from me and I have a right to reap the rewards of my efforts every two weeks in the form of a paycheck and the good feeling of helping folks. I've been in many settings in nursing and I think the real culprit is healthy boundaries in business relationships. When I was in the ER of course we never closed. People worked many hours together and most worked significant OT. Nurses spent much more of their waking hours at work then with their actual families. In this scenario I've seen boundaries simply disappear. People starting treating work life a second home and developing unhealthy relationships that cross the boundaries of how coworkers should treat each other. Everybody knows everybody's business, clichés are formed, feelings are hurt, people are picked on, well you get the picture... This is not a situation unique to women. Men are every bit as culpable. People start thinking of work as a second family and its not and shouldn't be. Its work.
Conversely for the last year I've been detailed to an administrative post. People work Monday through Friday 8 hour days. The lines are much less blurred there. People go to work, do their jobs, maintain collegial relationships and go home for the most part. Nobody would think to come up to ask a personal question that was clearly none of their business as healthy boundaries are maintained. The office I work in has about 50 Nurses & there are only two men. My women colleagues seem to get along fine. There are very rare flare ups between a couple oldsters that should have retired long ago but that's a great exception and nobody seems to get sucked into the whole misery pimp / drama queen dynamic which makes these occurrences short-lived.
All this boy / girl, education, race, sexuality, politics & what-the-hell ever friction between nursing factions has to be looked at and dealt with before we can pose any serious threat to the status quo. They are together & we are a bunch of squabbling children. As it is they win 10/10 times. So what do we do? Perhaps we respect each others differences. Respect boundaries!!! Start by not talking about other nurses unless they are present. Throw out the picayune personality nonsense and the judging and individual by what demographic group they are in and unite for a common cause which is bettering the lot of nurses and the patients they care for.