Don't know if I've ever posted before today (been a member for a while), but a post in another thread prompted me to respond to it and to post this. I've spent the last few years preparing for a career change into nursing and am in my first semester as a BSN student, and I'm irritated. I am NOT bashing nursing as a profession, but I am dismayed at the constant whining and complaining as well as the lack of any trace of intellectual curiosity that I have found in my short time around the profession among many BUT NOT ALL nurses. The #1 complaint among nurses that I have seen is a lack of respect by other health care professionals. You want to know why there is a lack of respect? Read on. In my short time, I've been around amazing nurses (bright, dedicated and excellent in what they do), but there are far too many that should be doing some else. Here's why nursing gets less respect than it should...
1) Constant whining. Nursing school is too hard, floor nursing is too hard, etc. News flash: most professions are really hard. Nursing isn't special in that regard. Medicine is brutal. IT, my former career, is cut throat. School teachers often have a miserable jobs. Cops work bad shifts and put their lives on the line. The list goes on an on. People that whine about nursing would whine no matter what career they are in.
2) The nursing culture. The claim of nursing being a "caring profession" (as if med techs, rad techs, RT's, etc. aren't caring), yet there is constant bashing of "bad" patients that are "noncompliant." In addition, many nurses go out of their way to humiliate students and new grads, talk about each other behind their backs, call physicians and other providers incompetent, and are in general rude, sour and bitter. Yet nursing is supposed to be the "caring" profession.
3) The nursing culture part II: Running around the hospital with balloons, teddy bears, flowers, whatever on your scrubs says to your colleagues, "I don't have a brain."
4) Nursing education. Learning to "diagnose" a patient with "Ineffective coping mechanisms related to disturbed transpersonal energy field" sounds like a bunch of hooey to a lot of people. Why? Because it is. It too screams, "I don't have a brain." Thankfully such stuff is only in the textbooks and not in the real world.
5) Feminization. I have heard ad nauseum that traditionally, physicians are men, nurses are women and that accounts for much of the disrespect. I actually agree. Ironically, many more women now are entering all health fields traditionally dominated by men (pharmacy, medicine, etc.) but there's barely been an uptick in the number of men going into nursing. Why? See #3 above for starters. Here's some other reasons. The local Sigma Theta Tau chapter at my school has brown and pink for their colors. The local CC has a teddy bear wearing an 1800's nursing hat and a big heart on its (her) chest (that'll make males race to apply to the program). Which, BTW, also screams, "I don't have a brain."
6) Lack of intellectual curiosity/knowledge. See #3 and #5 as well. One of my instructors this semester (who is a licensed pediatric nurse practitioner) could not answer a question as to what a lesion is. A nurse during my clinical last week did not know the difference between a H2 antagonist and a proton pump inhibitor, yet has been nursing for 20 years. My clinical instructor (with an MSN) "corrected" me and explained that myasthenia gravis is an intestinal disorder. I'm guessing they are like the students I had in my science prereqs that hated science and were just glad to get them done so they could apply to nursing school - never mind the fact that the sciences are the foundation of all modern health care practice. Would you go to a doctor that hated or was bad at science? What about a respiratory or physical therapist? Do everyone a favor - if you hate or are bad at science, spare your future patients and find another career.
In short, there's got to be a change in nursing culture for the profession to be respected.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
off-topic: as the seemingly resident pattern spotter, i will say that ruby vee does appear to have a bit of an axe to grind on that particular subject. it has been a pretty consistent feature in her posts, at least the ones i've read lately...i don't know why of course...but it is a little creepy.
what's up with that, ruby?? you're creeping me out here! =p
every six months or so, someone starts a thread claiming that they are a new grad, perfect in every way but their colleagues are mean to them and they think (or someone told them) it's just because they're so much younger and more attractive than those hateful old nurses. i used to secretly suspect they were trolls -- after all, no one over the age of 15 really believes that, do they?
then i happened to overhear an np student chatting away on her cell phone (when she was supposed to be looking at chest x-rays) and telling whoever she was talking to that "all the mean old nurses here hate me because i'm so much younger and better looking than them, and i'm above them." so i guess those people really do exist. (not the haters, but the folks who really believe that the only reason they cannot get along with their colleagues is that they're all jealous of the extreme pulchritude of the poster.) in the case of that np student, there were a myriad of other reasons why she didn't get along with the icu nurses, and none of them involved her great beauty. i suspect that's the case for most -- if not all -- of the folks who believe that their own beauty is the only thing getting in their way.
so, it's something of a joke among my colleagues whenever someone screws up, has to ask you to do something you'd probably rather not do or is about to make your day more difficult whether or not they could avoid it. "don't hate me because i'm beautiful!" "no, i hate you because you gave three laxatives at 6:30 with predictable results." or, "no -- i hate you because i'm on call and you're calling at this ungodly hour to tell me i have to come to work." or, "no, i hate you because your patient coding made me miss my lunch break."
What an interesting thread! When I read the title I have to admit my first thought was "just one problem?" so I was relieved to see several raised. My take on the original post:
1) Whining
I agree that there's a lot of whining in nursing. Generally, though, I see what looks like whining as debriefing. In my experience this is predominantly to other nurses and/or friends and family. I know I do it, particularly after a difficult, frustrating or stressful day - it allows me to express sentiments that it would inappropriate to express to the people involved, to talk through things that I need to explore and thereby understand, to gain the perspective of someone less attached to my response (eg a less partial viewpoint than mine), to work out what I could have done or how I could have reacted differently...
I'm not sure why this is a problem. Nursing is difficult. And stressful, and complex, and frustrating (and rewarding, enjoyable and fulfilling). I feel quite sure people debrief about their days regardless of what they do - friends who work within their homes debrief about their frustrations to me as much as I do about my work to them. I think this is a gender-based issue - research I've read on how men and women are wired strongly indicates that women are more likely to use words to talk through their issues than men are. That doesn't mean it's an objectively better or worse method than having a beer, or running for an hour, or meditating, or whatever other stress management technique one uses, just that it's one way of processing significant events. And yes, nurses who do it would probably use this technique regardless of their job. I didn't see what point the OP was trying to make here.
2) The nursing culture.
My job without doubt involves proving care, in a markedly different way than the care provided by other members of the health care team. I provide care in a more sustained, intimate, coherent, comprehensive way, over a significantly longer period of time - where the medical team rarely spend more than ten minutes a day with the patient, and allied health have few interactions over half an hour, I see my patients not only over hours but also (for those of my patients with extended or repeat admissions) see their trajectory over months and even years.
That doesn't mean I care about them, in the same way I care about my friends and family. There are many patients I care for that I could cheerfully shove under a bus, if I thought I could get away with it. I suspect the OP has here conflated the act of caring (caring for) with the emotion of caring (caring about). That this is a common error doesn't make it less mistaken.
3) The nursing culture part II: scrubs
Outside ICU and OR nurses at my hospital don't wear scrubs unless their clothing's been rended unwearable for the rest of the shift, in which case they borrow a set of scrubs for that shift. We have the option of buying a uniform, which is a tax-deductible expense, or can wear 'neat, professional clothing' of our own - essentially enclosed shoes with no heel, no exposed cleavage or torso, no branded items. I therefore have no personal agenda about cutesy scrubs.
Anybody judging my intelligence and/or education level and/or knowledge base and/or clinical competence based on my appearance says to me, "I don't have a brain." Or perhaps, "I leap to conclusions based on significantly inadequate data, so be wary."
4) Nursing education.
I'm a little old-school for NANDA - it was being introduced in Australia toward the end of my training, and we're not in North America anyway. I think some of the diagnsoes are ridiculous, and some are attempts to articulate aspects of nuring care that would otherwise be wholly (instead of inadequately) unacknowledged.
The academic language of nursing is hampered by the struggle to create a profession from what was a calling and then a vocation, by 'ownership' of the term 'diagnosis' by medicine, and in some cases by a knowledge deficit about related disciplines (eg nursing ethics of care). That said, nursing diagnoses are an excellent way for students and novice nurses to unpack the complex aspects of patient conditions and interventions that need to be addressed in order to identify and meet patient needs. I'm wondering who the screaming "I don't have a brain" is to, here - patients don't read nursing diagnoses; in my expereince neither do medicos or allied health, and I don't in any case think we should be shaping our profession to the opinions of those outside it.
5) Feminization.
I don't think the increase of women in other health fields is ironic, but I agree that it's not balanced by a corresponding increase of men entering nursing. I do wholly agree that the insignificant change in gender balance in nursing is a problem, mostly because I think we're missing out on a lot of good potential nurses, and partly because men tend to be more forthright than women about pay and conditions. And I agree that part of the issue is that nursing is seen as a female field.
I think nursing promotion faces the same dilemma that Australian tourism faces - a tension between promoting what the buyer (tourist, potential nursing student) will be attracted to versus reflecting the attributes that we believe define us (heritage/diversity/culture, approachable/caring/trust worthy/comforting). And potential nursing students are as influenced by popular culture portrayals as the rest of the general public - few nurses on TV are men, and few are shown as being skilled or autonomous (one more nurse being disciplined by a doctor will have me scream at the TV). I did love Bad Medicine, though - which showed autonomous, competent, caring, smart male and female nurses working within a respectful team framework - but I digress.
6) Lack of intellectual curiosity/knowledge.
First off, I think tying this to the issues about clothing and faminisation is spurious at best. That aside - there are certainly intellectually incurious nurses, who are not at all interested in learning anything much new once they graduate. And I've certainly come across a distressing number who say that I'm too smart/intellectual to be a nurse, as though somehow these are mutually exclusive qualities.
I began my nursing training in 1989, when the first PPI was launched on to the US drug market. I can tell you how an H2 antagonist differs from a PPI, but readily admit that I don't know the pharmacological modality of every drug I give, or even in some cases how they differ from other kinds of drugs within that class. I knew a lot of it once, but in the interim more urgent knowledge has supplanted it. I don't, for example, know why ID might recommend a second generation cephalosporin over a third for Mr Brown. On the other hand, I work on a ward that has six, quite different medical specialties. Every paper I read about one means one less I can read about another, but I know a fair bit about each of them.
I often think that playing the "come back when you have more knowledge/experience" card is intellectually lazy, and I think you raise some very valid points. I won't say that, but I will point out that the knowledge priorities of a beginning student are quite different from those of an expert nurse. I wasn't there, so I can't say if the nurse in the clinical setting was dumb, preoccupied, too busy to stop and discuss the finer points of pharmacology witha student on placement, or genuinely didn't know. Sometimes knowing the indication just has to be enough, and sometimes not knowing more is dangerous and worrying. And I have no idea why your clinical educator mistook a neurological condition for an intestinal disorder (or even what that disorder might be), though rare is the nuse who knows everything.
But what do I know? Certainly not everything. I was intimidated by science when I was at school, and only completed a hospital-based nursing program. I guess I should be glad that the admissions panel didn't turn me away, though I'd like to think I'm not an entirely useless nurse despite that.
I can see some of what you are saying but I think it is the way you are saying it. You come off as very defensive and you certainly seem to have a lot of judgements about a profession you have not yet started working in yet. Maybe it's been a bad day or week or month but you are setting yourself up for some serious burnout in the future as well as missing out on some great opportunities to see the good that is this profession. While you are busy judging someone for the type of scrub top they are wearing, you might miss out on the experience and knowledge they may have to offer. I know you mentioned that you are not saying ALL nurses are like the things you noticed, but you do seem to have a lot of unfair generalizations. As far as complaining, etc, isn't that what you are doing right now? The forum is for support and part of that is just venting and complaining. That doesn't mean that nurses/we do it all the time. There are people out there that are just miserable in general and will find anything and everything to complain about, but step into someone else's shoes if they just need to vent a little. Why exactly are you going into nursing if you seem to have so many issues with it? I think it is way too early in your career to make such judgements. Maybe take a humble step back and realize that you still have a lot to learn, most of which only experience can teach you. In school and when you are working you are going to come across excellent nurses and horrible nurses. But every one of them will teach you a lesson. They will either be an example as to the kind of nurse you want to be or the kind of nurse you do not want to be. Either way, it is an example. What kind of nurse/co-worker/employee/student do you want to be? Good luck in your schooling and your career.
Wow, for someone that is just starting nursing school, you certainly have a lot of opinions! I think that if I were you, and not someone with almost 35 years in this profession, I would take a "wait and see" attitude. You might find that your assessments were not always so concise.
Does an instructor having an MSN ALWAYS mean never making a mistake? Perhaps forgetting a word? Not having all information about every drug there is out there to pull from the top of my head? Or out of some body orifice?
You seem to be a little judgemental awfully early in the game. Just my
PS- I have personally NEVER lost my curiosity. But, I do forget things from time to time.
Nursing being labeled as a whining profession is nothing new that some nursing student discovered on their own. Frankly, it's quite an old topic, yet not totally irrerelevent nor something to be completely dismissed. So some merit is deserved here.
I'm another experienced nurse who agrees with a lot, but not all of what the OP stated.
There may be some nurses out there, but I've never met an experienced nurse who believes that the best and brightest at science make the best nurses. In fact many will say the opposite:
"She's very book smart, but when it comes to actual nursing, yikes..." I've heard things like that over and over in my nursing years.
MD's will say the same about their colleagues as well.
Yes the sciences are the foundation, but proficiency at balancing chemical equations, how many joules of heat it takes to melt gold, etc.........come on!!
Many discouraged me from entering nursing as a young person because I wasn't "good" at science. Since I wasn't good, I studied harder/longer than the others to get the "A"'s and "B"s in science.
Honestly, I would encourage any young person that has a natural knack/gift of the biological sciences to pursue other fields. In fact if you are that science brilliant, I would ask you why you are in nursing school and not living up to your full potential?
Maybe I'm wrong.
But for you to say that people who are not good at science should look elsewhere for a career is dead wrong because there are many of us who are living proof that great nurses can be made from hard work and determination.
But again, I do agree with a lot of what you are saying and understand your frustration.
Nursing, as medicine, is often described as "an art, not a science". It takes instincts, more than rote scientific information. Not everyone has the instinct for it.
I haven't read all of the replies yet, but I agree with the OP: nursing students are a bunch of whining fuss pots. I'm still a student and man, they complain about everything. For example, "the tests aren't fair, why do we have to take the ATI, why do we have to learn this if it's not on the test, why do we have to do research?" etc., etc. Just be glad you're in the program and try to do your best and be your best! I have the attitude like I want to know as much as I can because I'm going to be taking care of sick people. If something goes wrong, 9 times out of 10 they're going to point to the nurse!
I can completely agree with you! I have worked in the same facility for over 20 years & you would THINK that these "youngens" comming out of school would have been taught some basics. I have sat jaw dropped at some of the brainless things that come out of the mouths of these babes, BUT, THEY can be directed in the correct way & with nurturing & guidance become very GOOD nurses... while on the other hand, I have worked with some "old" nurses who are dumber than dirt & think they can come in to this facility (I do work in a long term skilled care facility) because it's easy work.
Believe me when I say that working in the most highly regulated area of healthcare & being expected to take "care" of no less than 28 patients (ranging from age 16 to 100), being qualified to start, care for IVs, gastric feeding tubes, j-tubes, mickeys, trachs (with speaking valves, with high out put concentrators, with humifidied oxygen only, requiring respiratory treatments, or non of the above), patients who take MULTIPLE drugs with NUMEROUS side effects (that you MUST be cognizant of), have presure areas (which BTW most are admitted WITH) @ varying stages requiring different treatments (please be an expert in that area also!), not to mention the fact that they are required to supervise nursing assistants (some of whom can't take care of themselves much less the patients) & we are required to "give them guidance..inservice, inservice, inservice!!! " which is usually 1 on 1, WHEN you have time, & DO NOT leave until you have completed all your documentation & the new admission you got today... it is NOT the easiest of nursing jobs, BUT I, like the rest of us who plod on in these times of uncertainty with lawsuits abounding at the drop of a hat, wondering if you have done the best job today, done as "any prudent nurse" would do, LOVE my profession, LOVE my residents, LOVE teaching "newbies" why we do things this way & not that way, LOVE being a nurse. :redpinkhe
I didn't choose nursing, Nursing chose me! Mine IS a labor of love, and my hat is off to those of you who work in other areas of our profession, I know you'll understand what I mean when I say "THAT takes another "special" kind of nurse my brothers & sisters!"
It's not that serious.It's only meant to bring cheer to patients and make their days look better instead of bleak. Granted, it doesn't work all the times, but the few times it does, makes a difference.
Now, where's that Tom and Jerry scrubs again?:)
I am an elementary school nurse, and I wear Winnie scrubs, and pink Birkenstocks that have the front half of a hippo on the left shoe, and the rear end of the hippo on the left shoe. It seems to make new students more comfortable with approaching me, and can be a conversation starter to help break the ice. Who is this about, anyway? My being well dressed and respectable to other, often critical, adults, or having children feel comfortable telling me things occurring in their lives that I often wish I never had to hear from another human being, much less a child??
this post is great, too, but i was trying to write a comment on a different post and somehow ended up back here! I'm embarrassed to admit that I can't figure out how to delete...
Wearing hearts, flowers, teddy bears...whatever...on scrubs has nothing to do with intelligence, but I think you already knew that. I know some nurses who wear "decorative" scrubs because are not so mundane....or plain. There's a lot of flowery teddy bear wearin nurses who I am sure could save my life.....effortlessly. Are you at the point yet in your career?
I feel sorry for whoever is going to get the pleasure of working with you 
Ruby Vee, BSN
17 Articles; 14,051 Posts
every six months or so, someone starts a thread claiming that they are a new grad, perfect in every way but their colleagues are mean to them and they think (or someone told them) it's just because they're so much younger and more attractive than those hateful old nurses. i used to secretly suspect they were trolls -- after all, no one over the age of 15 really believes that, do they?
then i happened to overhear an np student chatting away on her cell phone (when she was supposed to be looking at chest x-rays) and telling whoever she was talking to that "all the mean old nurses here hate me because i'm so much younger and better looking than them, and i'm above them." so i guess those people really do exist. (not the haters, but the folks who really believe that the only reason they cannot get along with their colleagues is that they're all jealous of the extreme pulchritude of the poster.) in the case of that np student, there were a myriad of other reasons why she didn't get along with the icu nurses, and none of them involved her great beauty. i suspect that's the case for most -- if not all -- of the folks who believe that their own beauty is the only thing getting in their way.
so, it's something of a joke among my colleagues whenever someone screws up, has to ask you to do something you'd probably rather not do or is about to make your day more difficult whether or not they could avoid it. "don't hate me because i'm beautiful!" "no, i hate you because you gave three laxatives at 6:30 with predictable results." or, "no -- i hate you because i'm on call and you're calling at this ungodly hour to tell me i have to come to work." or, "no, i hate you because your patient coding made me miss my lunch break."