I feel like its outdated and perhaps out of touch, and it diminishes the critical thinking and professionalism that one needs to be an excellent nurse, instead focusing on nurses promising to be good people and to play handmaiden to the doctors.
I wouldn't mind an oath for nurses...but I'm not a fan of the one we currently have. If I were on a committee to write a new pledge, I would want to add to it some wording about being critical thinkers and knowledgeable about our fields. Something that encompasses our roles as professional clinicians AND as comforters and caretakers. I would definitely keep the part about elevating the standard of our profession. I would probably want to update the wording on the "aid the physician in his work"...because heath care is our work too, and it takes a team.
For anyone who doesn't recall the pledge, here it is:
"I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care."
Anyway, I'm just wondering if I am the only one who feels this way. Please don't hate - I still love my job as a nurse and I try to be a good one!
Probably when Nightingale wrote this pledge, there was a doctor behind her dictating what to write.
Florence Nightingale never wrote anything that ridiculous. It was written and named in her honor by a nursing instructor in, I think, Detroit. Nightingale had nothing (directly) to do with it.
It saddens me that nurses want to abolish every bit of our history. I have no problem with the Nightengale Pledge; we said it at our capping ceremony and again when we graduated in 1985. Like others said, you don't have to take every bit of it seriously.
Besides, who is going to write a new pledge? How would we ever find a pledge that would suit everyone? We have much bigger fish to fry in our profession.
I agree. I love our nursing history and don't mind the pledge.
The same way we do to "one nation, under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance. With the understanding that it's an irrelevant "leftover" from an earlier time (IMO, the "under God" in the pledge is much more offensive because of its history. At least the writer of the Nightingale pledge was sincere when she wrote it). I just omit the "under God" when I say the PoA (I can't help that it's now in there, but, by golly, nobody can make me say it :)), and would do the same today with the Nightingale pledge -- although, if it were up to me, I would use one of the updated versions and omit any reference to "God."
The original pledge of allegiance did not contain "God".
I really like this topic.... it defiantly brings an idea to the table that I have never have thought of before. I agree with a few things that the pledge says and there are a few things I disagree with! It should be revised. It's 2015.... our profession has changed drastically over the years and NURSES everywhere deserve to be respected as professionals with Autonomy!!
nlitened
739 Posts
I am still a nursing student, but did not know there was a pledge. As an atheist I would not partake in reciting it.