why do many MAs and CNAs call themselves nurses?

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Oct 8, 2015

NO ONE who is not a licensed nurse should be referred to as a nurse, whether in or out of hospital. It has nothing to do with showing them respect or having respect for the contributions they make or the knowledge they may possess.

In my state it is ILLEGAL to refer to ancillary staff as nurses if they are not in fact NURSES.

LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN · Oct 9, 2015

I have noticed that same phenomenon. Most nurses don't say their nurses when they are patients. I've heard various reasons as to why. Personally as a patient I didn't see any reason to tell them unless they ask.

...or a family member calls and announces it over the phone after working last night when they don't want to take their medicine to their night nurse, or to every doctor and medical staff when you go to their appointments-what happened to the element of surprise! :bag:

SleeepyRN · Oct 9, 2015

I have noticed that same phenomenon. Most nurses don't say their nurses when they are patients. I've heard various reasons as to why. Personally as a patient I didn't see any reason to tell them unless they ask.
The other day we had a patient claiming to be a nurse. One of my coworkers took out his phone and said "really? Hmmmm. I looked at the board of nursing web site and your license didn't show up there. Are you licensed in another state?" I wish I had thought of that.
Nurse wannabes are are so annoying. I was working in a chronic dialysis unit a few years ago. We had a patient who would become unresponsive and start jerking. She had a neuro evaluation and was found to be having "pseudo seizures". (I.e. She was faking it). One day shortly after that I was in charge and the techs asked me to come and evaluate her because she was doing it again. They were great. Even though they knew she was faking they knew enough to know that we need to evaluate her and document our findings. I did an assessment and her vitals were normal, O2 sats were fine, she was lying down so she couldn't fall and hurt herself. It was the same old thing she did every day.
So I turn around and here comes the secretary - not a tech, not a medical assistant; the secretary - pushing the crash cart. I said "what are you doing? We don't need the crash cart". She was hysterical, saying I needed to do this and that and call 911 and blah blah blah. I said "no she's fine. I assessed her. She does this every day and nothing happens." And by this time the jerking had stopped, the patient was awake and alert because now something very interesting was happening and she didn't want miss anything. The secretary argued with me. I ignored her and walked away. Then she had the nerve to report me to the manager for being unsafe and not showing proper concern for the patient. Hello, you are THE SECRETARY. Where did you get the knowledge and skills to evaluate my judgement and care? Ticked me right off. The manager kind of made made noises about writing an incident report. I laughed and said "you can't be serious. You're going to commit to paper that a secretary questioned the judgment of the charge nurse? Well, I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but Im going to leave now and give you some time to think about what that will say about your qualifications as a manager."
That was the end of it. Then I pulled the secretary aside and had a private chat with her about how she should probably stick to her data entry tasks and let the nurses handle the medical things.
Latee her I found out that the secretary was friends with the manager's daughter and she had been getting away with doing this kind of thing for a while. Until then the manager hadn't given much thought to how letting a secretary make medical decions might reflect badly on her judgment. Fortunately I'm too dumb to understand politics.

Wow! I would have been fuming. It would reassure me, though, knowing that my charting on the situation, before during and after the episode, would back up that I absolutely used sound nursing assessment and judgment. Pffft. Incident report. Try it. Your documentation backs you up.

Allison T · Oct 9, 2015

Sadly, on social media, I sometimes see practitioners who are advanced practice nurses (such as nurse practitioners) being called "doctor," and not correcting the person who posted it. Like "You are the best doctor." There's also an issue with some dialects of American English where people say, "I do my doctoring with Ms. Smith the nurse practitioner." That one surprised me . . .

Julius Seizure · Oct 9, 2015

Hello, you are THE SECRETARY. Where did you get the knowledge and skills to evaluate my judgement and care? Ticked me right off.

The other day the secretary in my unit had lots of great suggestions for my poor hungry client that was on a clear liquid diet. She even went to the doctor to suggest them....so very helpful.... :sniff:

Hoosier_RN, MSN · Oct 9, 2015

Some are DNPs. Just sayin...also, for most people their PCP is their 'doctor'. I think if the NP isn't misrepresenting themselves, its not a legal issue, just the semantics of the people.

iSurvivor · Oct 9, 2015

Not sure why this bugs people. I don't care if an MA, CNA, PCA, etc calls themself a nurse. At the end of the day, they don't receive the same pay nor work under the same scope of nursing practice.

Editorial Team / Admin · Oct 9, 2015

Not sure why this bugs people. I don't care if an MA, CNA, PCA, etc calls themself a nurse. At the end of the day, they don't receive the same pay nor work under the same scope of nursing practice.

But they are misrepresenting themselves and possibly committing a crime.

roser13, ASN, RN · Oct 9, 2015

Not sure why this bugs people. I don't care if an MA, CNA, PCA, etc calls themself a nurse. At the end of the day, they don't receive the same pay nor work under the same scope of nursing practice.

As I have mentioned before, this issue vastly complicates my job of educating my patients. I must first untangle the untruths, half-truths and outright misinformation given to my patients pre-operatively. If the patients had not been led to believe that the surgeon's MA was a nurse, I would have no trouble properly convincing them that my pre-op instructions were appropriate to follow. As it is, it is difficult to impress that the instructions coming from me/anesthesia are to be used rather than those from the MA (at least without flat-out calling out the MA to the patient). (Which I do not do.)

Beyond that, it's just a little old issue of being illegal. If that doesn't bother you, then meh.

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Oct 9, 2015

Not sure why this bugs people. I don't care if an MA, CNA, PCA, etc calls themself a nurse. At the end of the day, they don't receive the same pay nor work under the same scope of nursing practice.

It bugs people not just because they are taking credit for doing the hard work of obtaining a nursing license when they did not. More importantly, they are a potential DANGER to the patient because if they give advice or misinformation, the patient doesn't know to disregard it because the patient has no idea the MA or CNA are talking out of their XXX. The patient believes he is being educated by a NURSE, who has received specialized education, training, and who is licensed by the state.

icuRNmaggie, BSN, RN · Oct 10, 2015

Not sure why this bugs people. I don't care if an MA, CNA, PCA, etc calls themself a nurse. At the end of the day, they don't receive the same pay nor work under the same scope of nursing practice.

It bothers me a lot to think about a high school dropout, employed as an MA, calling herself a nurse, and giving vaccinations to an infant or toddler, screening a physicians phone calls and calling it triage, or doing medication and illness teaching.

The consumer believes this office worker is a qualified nurse

when in fact she may have no education other than on the job training.

It bothers me to think that a CNA would be unwilling or unable

to accept or understand the difference between our roles and

responsibilities. It bothers me that a CNA would put patients at risk to boost her own ego.

I knew a CNA who took it upon herself to tell a visitor that the heparin drip would dissolve blood clots and do what she called physical assessments. She liked to say she had a nursing license to protect and once I stopped her from removing a surgical dressing to check the incision.

People that are this clueless are a danger to others and it bothers me a lot.

iSurvivor · Oct 10, 2015

I get it. Your points are valid from a legal standpoint. I was referring to RN, LPN's, etc that find it personally offensive outside of work ethic. This seems more of concern for the facilities which hire such individuals.