Here are some of the hard truths about nursing that few people outside of it ever consider when asking what it is we do all day.....that is, between our makeout sessions in the locker room with handsome doctors, our long coffee breaks, and our pillow-fluffing rounds.
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After seventeen years in health care, I've come to the conclusion that nurses are the baggage handlers of the industry: we move folks here and there, we make sure the manifest is correct and the right passengers' suitcases are on the right airplane, we try NOT to be too rough lest we damage something.....and as comedian Bill Engvall puts it, we catch crap all day just for doing our jobs.
I'm no statistician, but I estimate that we spend perhaps 20% of the time using actual nursing skills, and the other 80% just trying to get along with people. Patients. Families. Co-workers. Physicians and other practitioners. Administration. Middle management. Vendors. Discharge planners. Therapists. And of course, the general public, which has no idea whatsoever what nurses really do and seems to believe healthcare costs are so high because facilities have to pay nurses the "big bucks".
Now as members of a helping profession, we know that customer service is today's watchword, and this philosophy of health care isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Indeed, most of us went into nursing to be of service to our fellow man (and yes, to make some pretty decent wages while doing it). But NOBODY signs on to be blamed for every petty thing that goes wrong in a facility, e.g. bad food, missing laundry, poor TV reception ("Sure, I'll jump right on that---just let me go up on the roof and adjust the dish for ya!"), billing issues, cancelled activities, and late-evening fire drills.
Nor do we become nurses so we can be belittled.......harassed........screamed at.......threatened..........hit/kicked/bitten/spat upon/thrown across the room. All of these acts and more have been borne by nurses throughout the land, and all too often without recourse, as we are routinely discouraged from pursuing legal action against the perpetrator (who is not always a patient or family member!).
As an OB tech, I was once confronted by an armed, intoxicated, and very angry baby-daddy who threatened to kill everyone there unless we allowed him to see his newborn son. Since there was a restraining order prohibiting him from doing so because of his violent history toward the mother, I hit the panic button, which summoned Security and the police. While waiting for them to arrive, I tried to calm the distraught man down so he wouldn't shoot me. But what did they do but take him into an empty room, talk to him for about 20 minutes, and then let him go on his word that he wouldn't return. Really!?
I sometimes wonder whether he would have been dealt with more harshly had he threatened a group of physicians. The hospital never held a debriefing session; neither was counseling offered to those of us who'd been at the scene of what could have been a massacre. As it was, I had nightmares for weeks afterwards, and the incident was still being discussed during new employee orientation three years later when I returned to work there as an RN. But even though I've never gone out of my way to claim victimhood in this or any other occurrence, I think the way it was handled demonstrated how very far nurses have to go in being taken seriously.
Admiration, we have (if you believe the Johnson & Johnson campaign); it's respect that's lacking, and it all boils down to this: because we are viewed as expendable, we can be treated abominably and expected to suck it up. Why? Because there are a gazillion unemployed nurses out there who'll take our place if we don't.
In my next essay, I'll discuss reality checks for both nursing management and the public, and what nurses can do to further the cause of achieving parity with other healthcare professions.
