Respect as a professional

Yes, I have always felt respected. But it has to be said, in life, work and relationships in general, respect has to be earned.

Yes and no. For the most part, in my current hospital, I have been given a tremendous amount of respect from all of the healthcare team members. The evolution of the nursing profession has brought us to this place. Most of the physicians, PAs, and NPs who I interact with treat me as an interdisciplinary colleague. There are still a few, what I call "old school" folks, who don't give nurses respect within their profession. On the same token, there are still nurses who don't expect to be respected. Nurses who have been working for thirty years have seen a great deal of evolution, and many of these nurses have told me that they never imagined nurses would get the type of professional recognition they do today.

As far as getting credit for hard work, I'm not sure what you mean... maybe you could elaborate.

Good luck in nursing school. I remember having these types of discussions :) in school.

Yes and no. I think we have some respect from other professions in healthcare becasue they see what we do and how hard we work as we collaborate with them.

There are pockets of disrespect and sometimes it feels like we're bumping heads with respiratory therapists, physical therapists and pharmacists and they treat us like dopes instead of professionals. But they are as stressed as we are and I take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps they feel because we are right there with the patient, we think we are more important and don't acknowledge their hard work either.

The concept of the "Professional Nurse" is a university concept that is important to some people, but not to all. A lot of nurses on the front line want to be treated as professionally, but aren't interested in whether or not nurses are a "profession" by the university definition, which of course gets into the the BSNs are professional nurses and ADNs are not debate, and leaves out LPNs all together. Do we want to go there? Anyone? LOL

Thank you so much for your opinions. I am glad to see that RNs find respect in the work place. So far even as a nursing student, I have been treated very well during my clinicals in the hospital. I understand that "professional nurses" is a universty concept and that does make sense, and could be controversial. I do not mean to cross any boundaries. But I do hope that it really is thought about while working. I am also glad to hear you remeber these discussions from school. Thanks again for the feedback!