Well I am glad that the subject of nurses low pay got as much attention as it did. I was just curious what others would think when they read the responsses of the people who post to this forum.
What they said was that it doesnt seem that nurses mind getting paid 40 - 50k a year for all the work they do. They have a patients lives in their hands every day and that is a huge responibility. What others who arent in the nursing field dont understand is why nurses dont demand to be paid if not for their level of education then for their level of responsibility.
One question that was raised is why do nurses still act like doctors handmaids. People have seen nurses get out of chairs so doctors can sit down, get doctors coffee and let doctors blame them for things that arent their fault, Why?
Maybe if nurses acted like professional towards others in the medical field then they would be looked upon as professionals and not doctor's underlings.
I am just trying to show what the average person thinks of nursing and wondering what we as nurses can do to change their perception?
MMMMM what makes a professional, as an rn with a member I have too say - it is not that.....
I think it has something to do with how we work with each other. I need to say I have only worked in Australia and New Zealand - so it may be diffenet in other places. What happens when you do something wrong? Not something that ends up with a patient dying, rather something that was just a stuff up. Lawyers huddle together and make sure know one knows about it. Doctors have round table discussions so that everyone (that is a doctor) learn from it. We nurses (in my experience) have more of a tendancy to hang the guilty nurse out to dry, the charge nurse, then the num and possibly further up all reprimand the guilty nurse... often it is said this is to learn from - but I have watched new grads quickly become timid scared nurses afraid to think past what the num tells them to do for fear that they will do something wrong. I feel that we are so busy trying to prove that we are professionals that at times we do so by pointing to faults that other nurses have made. We all fill out incident forms if a mistake is made, and these forms are reported on... what was the last time you heard of an incident form filled out because of a doctor.
When I do audits for quality control it is only considered a mistake if the nurse has made the mistake. If a Doctor fails to sign a medication order it is only a mistake if the nurse acts on the unsigned order, at no time is the Doctors mistake considered.
I say all this because I think that we I trying to show how good we are by pointing out how few mistakes we make, shouldn't we indicate how good we are by pointing out positive achievements?
My whatever comment was headed toward the person with the member envy going on, not you helllo nurse! Hell, I am a great professional nurse and I do not, nor have I ever had a member!!:)
Hey, I thought I was being light-hearted- making a joke.
Thanks for clarifying, itsme.
I was about to think this board had gone crazy.:stone
Nursing is a profession. It's considered a professional occupation, or at least the registered nurse is considered as such. If you wan't respect from doctors, give it up. They aren't even in our profession, they're in their own profession. I consider nurses more important, in the end, than doctors. Doctors are going to see it the other way. The modern medical model includes the physician and the nurse. You can't get rid of one or the other. Just like in law, you need the judiciary and the police.
Specializes in Medical/Surgical, PACU, ICU, and Psych.
good point, plato....i hate it when people make comments about nurses being "under" doctors or less than doctors....i consider nursing and doctoring to be totally different things these days...the focus of care is completely different
One of my students asked this in class today "What is it going to take to get nursing to be more respected as a profession?" I responded that we have come a long way in the last 40-50 years, and we still ahve a long way to go. My personal thought is that we need to be more unified as a profession and not be so divided on the issues. (Have you seen how much power the AMA has when they band together?) Also, I think that we tend to confuse the public with so many entry level nursing positions and degrees. We would be more understood by the consumers if we could agree on an entry level degree, but there again lies another huge problem that I'm not going to touch on this forum. Just two cents worth...
The truth is that nursing is struggling to find it's professional identity because for the longest time it was, and still is, dominated by women, and women have for most of history, been considered second-class citizens. Times are a-changing. If men had been the primary workforce in nursing, it would be considered equal to the MD, or at least in terms of professionalism (just like the accountant is considered as professional as the MD).
They say we need to be paid more, but that's not ture. Economics determines that. Economically, MDs are hard to produce, so they get paid more. Nurses are easier to produce (at least on paper) so they get paid less. Simple supply and demand. I think we'll be seeing our pay increase faster than normal in the future.
Education is not really an issue. The ADN is the entry degree, and the civilian industry respects that, but the ANA and government (VA/Military) bias toward the BSN. Nurses don't need to have a BSN any more than physicians need their residency to be part of their medical school program. But the education industry needs nurses to have a BSN and higher. The ANA judges nurses by their political/academic standing, the education industry wants customers. They'd both have us all DNSc. if they could. Since the 1950s, ADN nurses have done the job well. Even the military commissions ADNs in times of need.
Where I work, sadly, you can't tell the difference between the ADN and the BSN. It seems like there should be some way. When I was in school, I met one nurse who was really sharp. She had excellent logical and critical thinking skills. She talked like a smart person and refered to things in the proper terminology. She could explain disease processes very well, and was great with patients. I was sure I had spotted a BSN nurse--nope. She was an ADN nurse. So there you go. I'm working on my RN to BSN. I already have a BS, but the hospital pays for it, and I like school, and it's no where near as tough as my ADN was, so why not?
One of the definitions I heard is that a vocation is a Profession if that vocation governs itself and makes its own rules and regulations. Every state has its own Board of Nursing, that makes the rules for practive, education, job duties, scopes of practice. I don't know about the other states but in Oklahoma the Board is made up of RN's, LPN's, 2 members of the Puplic. So Nurses as a Profession, governs itself. So I think it would qualify as a profession.
Specializes in ER, PED'S, NICU, CLINICAL M., ONCO..
So many threads complaining about the same subject? May be everyone is trying to describe his/her view of the whole picture.
The point is: "MAY BE THE REAZON FOR MOST OF THE SADNESS AROUND NURSING ORIGINATES ITSELF IN ITS LOW STATUS".
Instead of attacking those who complain, why not to go straight to the point?
Instead of complaining why we don't try to do something about it.
Personally, I don't think that "all nurses growing a member" would be the solution.
If the status of our profession changes, nurses will be better paid, better treated, and more people would be attracted to nursing schools relieving at the end the pressure that lays upon all of us.
I believe we must use aggressive therapy, that is, WE MUST EDUCATE THE WORLD ABOUT NURSING. How? Two ways:
1.We do it already in our everyday job making individual teaching.
2.we must invade the media with advertising campaigns inviting the public to ponder over our values.
So many threads complaining about the same subject? May be everyone is trying to describe his/her view of the whole picture.
pmchap
114 Posts
MMMMM what makes a professional, as an rn with a member I have too say - it is not that.....
I think it has something to do with how we work with each other. I need to say I have only worked in Australia and New Zealand - so it may be diffenet in other places. What happens when you do something wrong? Not something that ends up with a patient dying, rather something that was just a stuff up. Lawyers huddle together and make sure know one knows about it. Doctors have round table discussions so that everyone (that is a doctor) learn from it. We nurses (in my experience) have more of a tendancy to hang the guilty nurse out to dry, the charge nurse, then the num and possibly further up all reprimand the guilty nurse... often it is said this is to learn from - but I have watched new grads quickly become timid scared nurses afraid to think past what the num tells them to do for fear that they will do something wrong. I feel that we are so busy trying to prove that we are professionals that at times we do so by pointing to faults that other nurses have made. We all fill out incident forms if a mistake is made, and these forms are reported on... what was the last time you heard of an incident form filled out because of a doctor.
When I do audits for quality control it is only considered a mistake if the nurse has made the mistake. If a Doctor fails to sign a medication order it is only a mistake if the nurse acts on the unsigned order, at no time is the Doctors mistake considered.
I say all this because I think that we I trying to show how good we are by pointing out how few mistakes we make, shouldn't we indicate how good we are by pointing out positive achievements?