Respect From Doctors?

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Hi guys! I am a pre-nursing student and i am very interested in the field. I was wanting to hear from some of you nurses about how things work in the hospitals. Are the doctors respectful? Or do they treat you as inferior. Do they push their authority around and everything is their say? I'm curious because I want to know if the nurse has any say or negotiation on the treatment of patients and such. (Call me crazy, i'm just curious and I want to know from the best.)

Specializes in Oncology.

There's 3 doctors I work with routinely and two I work with semi-regularly. One is just an ahole and a terrible doctor. He doesn't outright disrespect me, he's just not a nice person. The other doctors and supervisors openly dislike him as well and frequently write him up. How he still has a job, I don't know. One attending told me to page him at home even if he's not on call if this guy is on call. Sad. One of the doctors is solidly decent and pleasant. I don't really like his personality and some of the stuff he does on occasion, but we've never been anything but pleasant to each other. 1 of the doctors is quiet, but smart and respectful. The last two are FABULOUS doctors and have an obvious strong respect for nurses, frequently asking me what I think should be done in a situation.

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Specializes in Family Practice & Emergency Department.
The nurses in my unit (SICU) are certainly treated with respect by our docs. You will occasionally meet a jerk who happens to be a doctor. You will learn to deal with them. I never tolerate disrespectful treatment from a doc. The reason some docs persist in being jerks to nurses is because nurses have allowed it. I will not hesitate to wake up a chief of staff at home to let him/her know what a jerk the doctor they employee is being. Residents and interns are pretty much at the nurses mercy. I will give you an example. If the resident on call is a good sort then before I call them with an issue I will poll all the other nurses on the unit and ask if they have any issues for the on call resident. That way we can minimize the number of times the resident must be woken up. I am under no obligation at all to do that and if the resident is not a good sort then I simply won't and the resident will be woken up 5 or 6 times rather than just once. They quickly catch on.

haha. i love that. hope i will never have to be that way, but i'm sure i will.

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