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?
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.
Is there a reason we have to insult flight attendants to make ourselves feel better? Pretty much the same as those insulting nurses.
People don't have a clue what nurses really do. I'd suggest many here don't have a clue what flight attendants really do. And we actually are pretty similar. People think nurses are there almost solely for customer service, "glorified waitresses," as some would aptly say, while the physicians do all the work that requires a brain. Flight attendants? Pretty much the same, as many, including those here, seem to think they're solely "glorified waitresses" and the pilots are doing everything that requires a brain. Let me know the next time your flaming hospital falls to the ground from 50,000 feet.
And heck, "glorified waitresses"? Nothing glorified about it. Those ladies get tips and clean up a lot less poo than we do.
I guess it depends on the region and socio-economic background of the person. rarely has someone been impressed when s/he finds out I am a nurse. Many times I have gotten comments that say or imply it is a low class (term?) job. I don't care . I am not proud of being a nurse, it does require some intellect to do it right ( which many don't do or realize ). At the end of the day, I still get paid. I also don't care about how much the public "trusts" us
While I completely agree with Lindarn (which statement alone will get a significant number of readers wish AN let them hit a delete key stat), I have to go back to the initial premise. My answer is,
Who the hell cares what ignorant people think? Educate them about what nursing really is (an autonomous profession, yes really), how much education you have to do it (especially if it's a lot of it), ask them if they really thought House's house staff really did all those nursing actions, and, as a last resort, laugh and tell them goodbye.
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.
Truthfully most of the BSN classes are just extra BS classes, but remember many people who have an RN actually have already been to college and many also have BA or BS in another field. But once they got that degree they were not able to get a decent paying job or it wasn't what they expected and then they went back and got an RN because they heard there were jobs available! There are alot more ADN RN programs rather than accellerated BSN or direct entry MSN and that is another reason why there are so many ADN's.
If you have the money and time and can afford to get your BSN it is certainly practical and will definetely give you an edge in hiring. So to those who can afford it and have the time to pay off the student loans I would advise them to go back to school. I just don't think this is practical for older RN's who are already struggling to pay the bills, care for their family, maybe even paying for their children's education and also need to be saving for retirement.
On top of that if you are young enough to get a BSN you probably should strongly consider getting an NP to get a job that won't destroy your back because I don't think working conditions are going to change for the better any time soon! You don't want to be trapped in a back breaking job because you didn't go back to school when you were younger! It is something to seriously consider! Most hospitals refuse to provide a no lift environment and continue to use nurses like pack mules so I would strongly advise anyone with the financial ability to get a BSN or NP and get out before they end up with a crippling back injury or have to face spending the rest of the lives in chronic pain! It is a hell of a way to live and to know that your job did this to you and there is nothing you can do to change it! I have a friend in the military and when she retired she got partial disability for all her aches and pains, knee, back, anxiety, depression. Even paid for her BS business degree! Amazing how good govt benefits are! But you or I would be hung out to dry and would have to hire an attorney if we ever were seriously injured and needed workers comp and forget about the chronic pain from the constant wear and tear of moving 200, 300, 400 pound people that couldn't move in bed and are incontinent. There is no prize at the end for becoming a nurse! This is the true reason that nursing jobs have been easy to find, because the working conditions suck and the stress, understaffing and wear and tear on the body drive people out of the field!
Is there a reason we have to insult flight attendants to make ourselves feel better? Pretty much the same as those insulting nurses.
People don't have a clue what nurses really do. I'd suggest many here don't have a clue what flight attendants really do. And we actually are pretty similar. People think nurses are there almost solely for customer service, "glorified waitresses," as some would aptly say, while the physicians do all the work that requires a brain. Flight attendants? Pretty much the same, as many, including those here, seem to think they're solely "glorified waitresses" and the pilots are doing everything that requires a brain. Let me know the next time your flaming hospital falls to the ground from 50,000 feet.
And heck, "glorified waitresses"? Nothing glorified about it. Those ladies get tips and clean up a lot less poo than we do.
I'm not sure how you found my post insulting to flight attendants.
Did I say they were inferior to nurses? No.
Did I say that they were less important than nurses? No.
Did I demean their role in ensuring airline safety? No.
I simply illustrated how the jobs are different. To extrapolate and interpret my post as somehow offensive or insulting to an entirely different profession with a unique set of skills, training, and regulations is ridiculous.
How often do patients crash in hospitals?
How often do planes crash?
When you board a plane, it is an expectation that you will make it to your destination without major problems. You don't expect that the plane will crash--hell, you don't expect that there will be any intimation of an emergency based on the safety protocols in place!
When you enter a hospital, that expectation is entirely different, even for minor concerns. Most of us have seen patients who come in with a complaint that is seemingly minor only to see it snowball into something much bigger. Innate to the function of a hospital--and the role of nurses--is the management of often fragile, complicated medical conditions and confused, angry, and sometimes terrified patients.
As a flight attendant, you can refuse service to a customer exhibiting behavior that is deemed appropriate. In nursing, those are frequently observed attitudes that are known to be parts of the grieving process and are also hallmarks of certain illnesses. They're dealt with--not kicked off. Again, an entirely different expectation.
Nurses and airline attendants are trained in how to respond to emergencies. But there is clearly a difference in education, training, and the frequency with which nurses respond to emergencies versus airline attendants. That's simply a fact--not to say that attendants are less important--but simply to highlight a difference between the two that makes the professions difficult to equate.
Yeah, that's the double-edged sword of forums, I guess. Still, it's not as bad as YouTube. I don't know what the TOS say about this sort of thing, but there has to be some sort of line between constructive criticism - even if stern - and trolling.
Bitterness is born through time and hardship. This manifests itself through the internet medium vent of direct contact (face to face), all the while maintaining the luxury of anonymity. I doubt that many of these people are even nurses themselves. Administrative types that deal with nurses on some level.
Trust me, though, other fields get knocked just as hard. If there's a platform/forum someone can find to vent, believe me they'll be there.
I'd write it off as nothing more than trolling. If you can, read other comments posted by some of the same people and you'll learn their MO.
There are definitely merits to taking those extra credit hours...like making a nurse sound like they have an education. I'm not sure if the level of care an BSN prepared nurse is superior to an ADN prepared nurse, but I am sure they will sound like an eduacted individual that you would want in charge of your health. Just my opinion.
I would tell those people that make the comments about flight attendants... when the plane is crashing and need to be evacuated
Think SFO a few weeks back... and witness who's risking injury by walking through turbulent cabins telling all the... um, passengers... to buckle up so they don't get bounced off the ceiling...
I would tell those people that make the comments about nurses that they will have a different point of view or they are having an acute MI at 2am and need to be resuscitated or they have surgery and are bleeding to death and need blood until the MD arrives.
Or how many times the doc says, "Oh crap, thanks for catching that!" or are standing their ringing their hands saying, "do you have a line yet, do you have a line yet!?!?" while the nurses are trying to get to the point where we can even *start* treatment.
Personally, I don't give a rip what people think about what I do... I'm content with the cash going into my account every day.. but I know where (and where not) to go if my kid is in a bad way.
That said, I *do* think that most nurses that I've encountered lack the academic horsepower to become physicians (the most simple example is how many people struggle with the rudimentary math and science that nurses are required to take.) That's not to say that docs are any better than us but it's pretty clear in my book that the averages in this area favor the docs.
Ask almost any ED doc, though, and they'll tell you how much they depend on good nurses.
I get statements rather like the doctor one, but they're never malicious. I live in a dorm and I was in the laundry room washing my scrubs for a meeting we have with our hospital clinical site. One of the guys on my floor saw my scrubs and asked if I was planing on becoming a doctor. After explaining everything, he was really nice and told me his mom works as a RN in NICU.
I don't think all the rude comments we get as nurses is done intentionally. Rather, people are very unintentionally ignorant. They only get to see a part of our profession and a sliver of what we do.
And for people being intentionally rude and malicious toward nursing? I guess you really don't appreciate something until it's gone.
I am in a BSN program, and I would not say that our extra classes are BS. I feel like it expands your knowledge on what makes up the nursing practice rather than just skills and disease processes you will encounter. Policy helps you to understand why and how policy works in the hospital. Also, research.. How wonderful is to know what made your practice be able to be practiced? All these classes make you have a well-rounded idea of what nursing encompasses in every aspect of the field. These courses also, in my opinion, make us realize WE can do things like conduct research and perhaps change a practice? It helps your realize your full role and scope of practice I guess you could say.. I am definitely not knocking ADN at all either... They work hard too.. All I am saying is, those classes are essential in moving nursing practice forward..
singh.abhineet
4 Posts
Well its way better than what they say about nurses in india!!