People sure do have some nasty opinions about nursing

[seconddegreebsn]

And they don't know how to keep those opinions to themselves!

Nursing school has meant my social life has taken a pretty big hit, and on top of that I've had to drop some people who have shared their uninformed opinion about my given field.

"If nurse were smart they'd be doctors, as it is they're a bunch of bitter old harpies who exist just to make doctor's lives difficult."

(I wanted to tell this person if they were smart they'd be a filmmaker and not an unemployed assistant cameraman but I was too kind to disparage their chosen field)

"Nurses are pretty much glorified flight attendants. This is a customer service job - if they're tired they should just quit."

(Next time you're in the hospital tell the nurses that and tell me how it goes)

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put on a band aid."

(well, then put on your own band aid, genius)

I have my own grievances with the field and will complain about it, but when someone who's outside the healthcare setting says stuff like the above I get angry (and maybe a little bit defensive) - this job is not easy! I guess this is what they mean as nursing being a lifestyle and not just a job - I can't really relate very much to certain people any more.

After hearing some of the dumb things that have come out of people's mouth, I'm thinking nurses really need better PR: people really do not understand what nurses do at all! Have you all been subjected to the same sorts of ill-advised opinions?

[juan.ramirez0426]

My friend used to think like this. That is until his liver exploded in the middle of the night and there were no MD's in sight...

[Spidey's mom, ADN, BSN, RN]

Well, let's not diss doctors either. They have a lot longer education period than we do starting with Undergraduate Education which is four years at a college or university to earn a BS or BA degree, usually with a strong emphasis on basic sciences, such as biology, chemistry, and physics (some students may enter medical school with other areas of emphasis).

Then 4 years of medical school.

Then a 3 to 7 year residency program where the first year is considered "internship" although I just found out while googling that the AMA no longer uses this term.

Then a Fellowship which is one to three years of additional training in a subspecialty is an option for some doctors who want to become highly specialized in a particular field, such as gastroenterology, a subspecialty of internal medicine and of pediatrics, or child and adolescent psychiatry, a subspecialty of psychiatry.

The docs I work with are good friends and colleagues - so much so that I've read many biographies over the years about docs and their internship year. It is very hard. The hours are brutal. Way more than simply the 12 hours referred to above.

I don't think anyone should diss nurses, flight attendants or docs.

I've never heard these disrespectful sayings in the OP in person but only on allnurses in venting about stuff.

[Lennonninja, MSN, APRN, NP]

Yep... Our unit's nurses got called glorified waitresses by another nurse. It even happens within the profession.

When I worked med/surg there were certainly times that I felt more like a waitress than a nurse I would never disrespect another nurse from another unit by referring to them as a waitress though.

[OCNRN63, RN]

SERIOUSLY! I'd like to send these people to a nurse-less hospital and see how they liked that?

Thanks for the kind replies. I think the flight attendant comment was the most hurtful (that was from someone who I considered to be a close friend, well...past tense now) because there's a sort of classism to it that I cannot condone. She was implying that working in a service based industry is inferior - these people are just there to serve her needs and don't have any needs of their own, that their jobs are not prestigious, and if they're frustrated they don't deserve remediation - they should just quit and get over it. Most of the flight attendants I know are college graduates and very smart, capable people, and most of the nurses I know are more educated than their peers and continue their education for the course of their lifetime - but I guess working on your feet somehow implies we are not professionals. I'm still angry thinking about it.

Jennybrie, totally agree with you about the "another language" thing - when I meet friends and they're complaining about their incompetent assistant messing up their Starbucks order, then ask me how my day was and the first thought in my head is, "Well, I worked with a NICU infant that will likely die before the day is over," sometimes I don't even know what to say. This field definitely will give you perspective!

I'd say exactly that. Tell them all the gory details of a resusc. on an infant. "You think you had a bad day because your assistant got you a vanilla latte with cinnamon instead of without? Well, I had a baby that coded today, and..."

Sometimes you may lose a friend or two when you become a nurse; it happened to me. You just have to keep moving.

[Tinker88]

I'm reading about how nursing use to be viewed in one of my nursing courses. I'm learning history, theory, etc. I don't know though; where I'm from nurses are viewed as educated individuals. Never in my life have I heard a negative thing about the nursing profession, so for people to think these things really shocks me! I really don't know why someone would want to be negative about it either. This will be my 2nd profession and I was attracted to it due to the fact that nursing is well respected where I live...or so I think. I know I look up to nurses, and that's why I want to be one. Nursing is intriguing!

[SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN]

I had a coworker--a BSN-RN-prepared Army nurse--who agreed that nurses were basically flight attendants for patients.

I voiced my opinion that those jobs were totally different. She had the same reply about customer service, safety, yada yada yada. I thought it was pretty sad considering the gravity of the work we did and the fragility of the patients we treated.

I told her the next time she got on a flight where half the passengers were actively on chemo, another half were neutropenic and the flight attendants were running around doing 5 Rights Pepsi and pretzel checks, discussing the safety of flight plans with the pilot and actively ensuring that their passengers weren't dying, she ought to let me know.

[lindarn]

I have said this before, and I will say it again. As long as nursing continues to allow a less than four year college degree, as ENTRY INTO PRACTICE, nursing will continue to have a blue collar tinge to its appearance. Spare me the, "nurses were voted the most trusted profession for X number of years in a row". blah blah blah. As we say in Brooklyn, that and $0.50, will get you on the subway. Two to three year Diploma programs, no college credit, two year Associates Degree, no four year degree, one year LPN/LVN, programs, earned at technical insitutes, on line degrees, need I say more?

The public equates worth with education, and nursing has continued to fall short. The only reason that there is a push for BSNs at some hospitals, is to get nurses, old and new, to go back to school, help the hospital earn the prescious "Magnet Standing", and get nurses once again fighting each other, instead of the hospitals. But the NLN and ANA, still have not crossed the line and made it official.

Nursing should have gone to a BSN as entry into practice 50 years ago. The Associates Degree, was supposed to be a stop gap, degree, but not a terminal degree, to RN Licensure. The PTB,were hesitant to make it mandatory, and have allowed nursing to remain in educational limbo. No college degree, but still allowed to be considered a professional. Unfortunately, it does not pass the smell test.

Physical Therapy ASSISTANTS have an Associates Degree as entry into practice. I have never heard of a Physical Therapy Assistant killing someone with incompetance, but nurses all over the country, lose their license due to practice issues. And Physical Therapy Assistants don't do nearly what nurses do for/to, patients.

Why on earth should a nurse have less than a four year college degree as entry into practice, but careers like PTA, have an Associates Degree? Recreational Therapists have a Bachelors Degree as entry into practice. Why, you say, because the PTB, found that keeping nurses, "barefoot and pregnant", makes them more compliant, easlier to manipulate, and control. And with no college degree, or credits, they had nurses captured in the career. No place to go, without starting from scratch.

When Diploma programs were the rule, and not the exception, if an individual wanted to change careers, it was diffucult, if not impossible. Nurses had no college credit or degree, as nursing courses/prorgam were taught at the hospitals, by instructors who did not have the necessary credentials and license to teach. The schools were not accredited to award college for the courses that they taught.

It was not until the mid 1970s, that Diploma Programs started to add, Bona fide college credits to their programs, and affiliated with local colleges to send the students to.

This was an earthshattering developement, at the time. Programs were bragging, how many college credits you could earn in a Diploma program, while Associates Degree programs were becoming more popular.

While I agree, that Diploma programs prepared nurses who were able to hit the ground running the day after graduation, we don't see physician doing brain surgery or heart transplants the day after they graduate from medical school, do we? So maybe the abilty to hit the ground running right after graduation, is not as desirable as we think.

Other health care profession, Pts, Ots, STs, etc, ALL have a mandatory one year residency after gradution, before they can go out on their own to practice. I have had OTs tell me, that they wer glad that their programs were now a Masters, instead of a Bachelors, because fewer students would try to become OTs, and with fewer students, there are fewer OT, and this keeps them in demand. Imagine that?

This less than professional image of nursing still permeates the profession today. We need to demand that new grads be placed in internships/residencies (paid), after graduation, to ease the transition from student to practitioner. If other professions can do it, so can we. We just need to DEMAND IT, AND NOT ASK "NICELY". Like a "nice nurse". Some more agression is needed for nursing to take its place, and stand head to head, with other health care professionals.

JMHO and my NY $0.02

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN(ret)

Somewhere in the PACNW

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

Why are you taking everyone's comments so seriously! Nursing is a job, you don't have to wear it as a badge of honor 24/7. In my off time I've heard a few complaints, I don't take it seriously, yet alone personally! I just change the subject and that I don't want to think about work on my off time. You have a choice to either let it go or try to educate them on their wrong perceptions about nursing. It's up to you, but why take it so seriously to the point of writing people off as friends. Do you have so many friends that you can afford to throw some away because they have misconceptions about nursing? Let's face it you said yourself you are a second degree BSN so you didn't choose this career straight away. Obviously your first career plans didn't work out the way you expected, so you decided to make a smart choice to get a decent paying job in a short period of time! Life is too short to be getting angry and losing friends over their view of nursing. Most of the comments you listed bother you because they have a grain of truth in them. It's true you have to be really smart to get into medical school and become a doctor. Why be insulted by that. Many nurses feel like waitresses with the insanity of making customer service more important than patient care, health, safety and quality. Are you a nurse already or still in school? Just curious, but I suggest you relax a little and stop taking it so seriously. If you get this upset over innocent comments how are you going to handle the many rude and ridiculous comments patients and family will say to you and the sometimes impossible expectations they have that they are a spa or 4 star hotel! You gotta get some tougher skin to work in nursing!

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

In response to Lindarn's comments nursing will never be considered truly a professional as long as we are the only licensed "professionals" that have to clean and turn the patients and break our back doing so! You don't see any of the other techs PT/OT etc doing the actual patient care. They refuse to do the dirty work, but the nurses are still required to do it and break our back in the process. With the foley free crusade it is only making our job more difficult. Frankly I can't imagine patients would want to be incontinent with depends if they could have a foley. I sure wouldn't choose that! Also we have to punch a time clock and many work through lunch without getting paid. How is a BSN going to change or improve these working conditions! Sadly the alternative to punching a time clock would be a lot more unpaid work than is already pretty standard in this field. There are many older nurses struggling to keep their job and living in chronic back pain because of these physical job requirements. If we were truly professional we would not be expected to use our body only our minds to care for our patients! A BSN is not going to change that!

In response to nurses disciplined most of the time it is because of drugs or alcohol not neglect or wrong decision making.

[Chisca, RN]

Physical Therapy ASSISTANTS have an Associates Degree as entry into practice. I have never heard of a Physical Therapy Assistant killing someone with incompetance, but nurses all over the country, lose their license due to practice issues. And Physical Therapy Assistants don't do nearly what nurses do for/to, patients.

.

You certainly like flogging a dead horse. A quarter of all sentinel events involve understaffing and your dream of making BSN the entry level to nursing would only worsen the shortage. I've seen some foolish things in my career that have harmed patients but not once could I say it was a result of not having a statistics course and an extra nursing theory class. Because that is all that seperates a BSN from an ADN.

[Glycerine82, LPN]

I like the quote....."nurses keep doctors from killing you". :-)

[Luckyyou, BSN, RN]

I've seen some foolish things in my career that have harmed patients but not once could I say it was a result of not having a statistics course and an extra nursing theory class. Because that is all that seperates a BSN from an ADN.

Ooooh boy. I don't want to start the ADN vs BSN debate again (dead horse), but I couldn't let this go. While I certainly don't advocate the BSN as the exclusive degree for entry level practice, I would hardly boil it down to the difference between an ADN and BSN being "a statistics class and an extra nursing theory class". In fact, the difference between the local ADN program (a program that puts out perfectly competent RNs who I am happy to call my co-workers) and the BSN program I graduated from is a whopping FORTY credit hours (86 for the ADN including prereqs and 126 for the BSN, and I am happy to provide citations if you'd like). So while you may not value the extra classes required to graduate with a BSN -- and we can certainly debate the merits of taking a fine arts/philosophy/theology class until those proverbial cows come home -- you certainly can't simplify it the way you did.