Nursing, a 'caring' profession or are we so much more?

madwife2002, BSN, RN

Nursing, a caring profession or is this a lame description?

Caring is such a mild description of what nurses are about. I believe the word care or caring are no longer adequate to describe what we as nurses do as a profession.

I really do think you have to be a special kind of person to be a nurse, over the years I have worked with Nurses from all walks of life, different cultures, beliefs and back grounds. Did all of them care....What does that mean to you 'Care'

So what do we all have in common?

What a difficult question, because I honestly think not many of us have much in common. Is our common ground caring? No I do not believe that is our common ground.

We are all bound together because we wanted to be nurses for one reason or another.

Another question which springs to mind 'is the reason we came into nursing the same reason we stay in nursing?'

Why did we come into nursing?

Again there are many different reasons why we become nurses.

One of the main reason nurses state they came into the profession is

'I want to care for people'

Really! I don't think that holds much merit anymore, nursing is a lot more than caring for people.

Caring ... Nurse ... what do the words mean?

In the dictionary

caring (adj)

feeling or showing care and compassion a caring attitude
(Social Welfare) of or relating to professional social or medical care nursing is a caring job

nurse (n)

A person educated and trained to care for the sick or disabled.

During many interviews over the years I have heard when asking the question 'tell me about yourself'. Responses will often include 'I care about people'. I do take that into consideration when selecting the right candidate but caring, is just not enough to be a good nurse.

Care or caring are the first descriptive words which come to mind when the public think of the word 'Nurse', I don't really think that many seasoned nurses would say I am a nurse because 'I like caring for people'.

Do we think that this is an old fashioned attitude which stems back from the era of Florence Nightingale? Do we really think that we as a nursing profession consider 'caring' as definitive description of what we do or what we stand for?

I believe nursing has evolved so much from the core values, that caring is no longer a good description of what nursing is all about. It is too simplified a description of what we do.

How many of you have heard an aide saying, 'the nurse doesn't care, I could do the nurses job all they do is give out medications, and talk on the phone?

I know as a manager I have aides and technicians coming to me saying that they do all the work because the nurse is always on the phone or writing notes in the computer.

This is what people we work with on a daily basis see nurses doing, and think it is easy.

Are they playing games on the computer, or socializing on the phone-I doubt it!

They are spending their time documenting, to cover themselves just in case they go to court 5 years from now. Caring who has time to care these days?

Remember if you didn't document you didn't do it! Seriously, you can document anything you want to it doesn't mean you did it, it just means on paper you said you did it! It always makes me scratch my head in wonder, because we have all met the nurse who documented something you know she never did.

I know where I work the nurses run round like headless chickens, trying to complete a 100 tasks at once, and if they do get 5 mins to breathe, are they sat in the patients room caring?

Not many, they are trying to run down to the break room to stuff their lunch and a drink down their throats as quickly as possible just in case it might be their last food of the shift.

I know I go to a restaurant and eat a meal faster than anybody else at the table, because I can. After a couple of decades on the job, I no longer notice that I eat my food fast, not pausing for breathe because it is normal for me.

Another thing I am fast at, showering! I kid you not I can shower, wash all my body, shampoo and condition my hair in under 5 minutes, grab a cup of coffee and be out of the door in 15 minutes from alarm to car.

Caring? No I do not think that is what we are all about, we are so much more than a caring profession.

Yes we do care!

We care very much-we care that we cannot spend as much time with our patients as we would like.

We care that if we don't document the conversation with the Dr, then we didn't have the conversation.

We care that we didn't have a drink or lunch that day.

We care that others are judging us on a daily basis.

We care that we have a heavy workload than anybody else.

We care because the reason we became nurses is no longer valid, we know we have different reasons we stay in the profession.

We care because in order for us 'to care for a patient', we have to be experts not in caring but in being efficient at managing the disease process, policies and procedures, up-to-date information about the day to day management of their 'plan of care'.

We care ...