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.
I know-- that bothered me, too. I'm thinking perhaps the OP concluded that since he/she had informed us of our Problem, we must all be very busy implementing plans based on his/her revelations. Maybe the OP will stop by now and again to check on our progress, and perhaps offer a little tweak in case we are stumped on which scrub tops scream "I don't have a brain!". That can get a little tricky without expert guidelines, after all.
Well gosh, y'all have been so balanced and non-judgmental in the replies on this thread. I can't imagine why the OP might have thought it wasn't worth her time to join this intellectual discussion... :smackingf:
although the op has some valid points, but the way she went about it was all wrong. not to mention disrespectful. looks like she needs a big slice of humble pie.
great, then i'd have to spend time on my day off doing the heimlich maneuver from all the choking on the pie.
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
Well gosh, y'all have been so balanced and non-judgmental in the replies on this thread. I can't imagine why the OP might have thought it wasn't worth her time to join this intellectual discussion... :smackingf:
I can't imagine why you think someone who calls nurses rude, sour, bitter, stupid, immature whiners deserves to have a happy, sweet, intelligent and mature response.
There's a link at the bottom of your e-mail called "unsubscribe from this thread". Another option might be to delete the e-mail when you recognize the objectionable subject matter. Last, there's the option of not clicking the link in the e-mail that takes you to the pointless thread.
those that take the time to think through what they say usually make a good point. this is the situation with many of the posts in this thread. those with completely opposite points of view can both be correct. one common theme that i often see, in this thread as well as in my own experience and in the experiences others have shared with me, is that most women will say they would rather work with men. the reasons given usually revolve around the issue of professionalism.
being a professional is not the same as professionalism. most people who have done their job for many years are considered "professionals" in that field of work. this does not mean they behave with professionalism. there is a very big difference in how men and women approach this issue. for example, women almost immediately will want to know the personal information of a new employee and will boldly come right out and ask "are you married? do you have children? what is your husband's/wife's/child's name?" etc. men, on the other hand, can work in a position for years and not be able to tell you which co-workers are married, the name of their co-workers spouse, children, or any other personal information, including the color of a co-workers eyes, the name of every co-workers pets or the entire wardrobe of each co-worker, let alone what each of them wore to work yesterday. this is not to say that men won't attempt to fit in and politely give answers to these questions or sometimes join in these conversations. the point being made is that men do not have the same level of "curiosity" about the personal business of others. these non-work related issues and curiosities are often the root cause or catalyst of many of the problems.
men tend not to ask as many questions and therefore are not as often offended by the "perceived" unpleasantness of the response. women tend to give their opinion, often with more meaning in their tone of voice than in the words they say, and consequently are perceived as mean. men say they like working with men because they don't have to deal with all the emotion of women. there are times when a woman's emotion can be beneficial, such as when working in peds or l&d. have you ever wondered why the majority of male nurses work in critical care areas such as the er or icu? perhaps it has a lot to do with the fact that in these areas, emotionalism is not appropriate. emotions are something you share with your friends, children, or your pet. it is not something you share with your co-workers and certainly not something to be shared between a supervisor and those they supervise.
if you have a bad day at home, your co-workers should not be aware of that fact, by word or deed, such as through passive-aggressive behavior. if you are going through a divorce, keep it to yourself or get counseling. don't vent at co-workers. when it is said that nurses eat their young, it would be more appropriate to say "women eat their young." this is not unique to nursing. i retired from the military and i can tell you from experience, the biggest problems i had with command involved women and their interpersonal relationships. after the military i entered the civilian work force in industry and government. again, the biggest problems i faced in management were with the interpersonal relationships of women. i am also a nurse with many years of experience and i can attest from that personal experience, the biggest day-to-day challenge is dealing with the interpersonal relationships of female staff members. with fifty men i won't have as many workplace issues that have to be addressed by management as i will with five women.
please, do not misinterpret what i am saying. there are many very knowledgeable women in all fields of employment that are very professional. nursing is no exception. nursing, however, is comprised primarily of women. women tend to be far more emotional. emotionalism is not a word that comes to mind, or is used, when describing "professionalism." if you want to be considered a professional, keep your personal life and attitudes out of it and treat people with respect and patience. if you want to cop an attitude, gossip, complain to or about other people, join a club.
in management school we learned that a large factor that influences the reality that most managers are male is that women are often temporary to the work force because they leave work to get married, have children or raise a family. men traditionally don't interrupt their professional lives for these considerations. i propose that a more realistic answer to this is that women often show too much emotionalism for management. often women say they don't want to be a manager because it goes against their nature. at other times, they are perceived as being too emotional to promote into management. the bottom line - emotions show bias. bias shows favoritism. favoritism creates conflict. conflict earns the reputation as being one who eats their young when those that are empowered vent their emotions on those who are not empowered (the new employee).
I checked back, and OP did respond to a few in the beginning. I think you're going to have to put a stake through the heart of this one. . .:flmngmd:
I had been hoping for a response to my cogent, reasoned post, but as that seems unlikely I may have to find a stake and dip it in garlic oil. But before I do I see a post I have to respond to...
I can't imagine why you think someone who calls nurses rude, sour, bitter, stupid, immature whiners deserves to have a happy, sweet, intelligent and mature response.
wow, bsn/mha/jd, kudos to you for turning this into a whole new ballgame. i don't know where to start. with the blatant generalisation that all women are more emotional and less professional - sorry, display less professionalism - than men? by pointing out that the more emotional, less professional gender has somehow managed to move into professions like medicine, law and engineering? or your binary view of the genders? i've decided to look at each thought and phrase in turn.
being a professional is not the same as professionalism. most people who have done their job for many years are considered "professionals" in that field of work. this does not mean they behave with professionalism.
initially i agreed with you here, but that was because what i thought you were saying was that we, for example, expect shop staff to act professionally without an expectation that this means they work within a profession. however, i now wonder if what you're saying is that nurses can be professionals in the sense of working within a recognised profession, without actually acting in a 'professional' (unstated definition to follow) manner.
there is a very big difference in how men and women approach this issue. for example, women almost immediately will want to know the personal information of a new employee and will boldly come right out and ask "are you married? do you have children? what is your husband's/wife's/child's name?" etc. men, on the other hand, can work in a position for years and not be able to tell you which co-workers are married, the name of their co-workers spouse, children, or any other personal information, including the color of a co-workers eyes, the name of every co-workers pets or the entire wardrobe of each co-worker, let alone what each of them wore to work yesterday.
hmm. i've worked with some of my colleagues for fifteen years - i don't really care if people are married, single or living in a plural relationship with a menagerie, and couldn't tell you the names of spouses or children of anyone i work with unless we're friends outside work, don't know my best friend's eye colour, and could easily work with a team who wear the same clothes every day of the year without noticing. and yet i seem to have 2 x chromosomes. there is one nurse at my work who is particularly interested in people's personal lives - not only their marital status but where they live, what kind of home, what they drive, their opinions on any range of subjects... and he's a guy. a straight guy, in case you're wondering, in his mid-fifties.
this is not to say that men won't attempt to fit in and politely give answers to these questions or sometimes join in these conversations. the point being made is that men do not have the same level of "curiosity" about the personal business of others. these non-work related issues and curiosities are often the root cause or catalyst of many of the problems.
oh dear, maybe i'm a man after all. i'm not very curious about the personal business of my friends, let alone my colleagues.
the next section has me a little confused. i'd appreciate any clarification bsn/mha/jd can offer.
men tend not to ask as many questions and therefore are not as often offended by the "perceived" unpleasantness of the response.
it sems as though you're saying that women ask questions and are offended by the responses to these questions, a distress men avoid by asking fewer questions. is that right?
women tend to give their opinion, often with more meaning in their tone of voice than in the words they say, and consequently are perceived as mean.
this is an interesting sentence that unpacks to three separate concepts. 1. "women tend to give their opinion" - are you saying that women give their opinions while asking personal questions, when answering personal questions, or that they just generally spill their opinions out all over the place? 2. "often with more meaning in their tone of voice than the words they say" - is that more meaning in tone than in words, or more meaning than men's tones? 3. "and consequently are perceived as mean" - who considers these women to be mean? are they considered mean because they give their opinions or because they use meaning-laden tones?
i have to say i'm surprise that these women aren't considered mean because they're being mean. i somehow manage to have many conversations most days where i give my opinion and convey meaning throough tonal emphasis in addition to word choice, without leaving the recipient perceiving me as mean. or at least i thought i did.
men say they like working with men because they don't have to deal with all the emotion of women.
ah, we return to the incontinently emotional woman. i like working with a mix of staff because my workplace is a reflection of the rest of the world.
there are times when a woman's emotion can be beneficial, such as when working in peds or l&d. have you ever wondered why the majority of male nurses work in critical care areas such as the er or icu? perhaps it has a lot to do with the fact that in these areas, emotionalism is not appropriate.
i'll give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you weren't trying to be patronising with this remark. in which case you might like to think about why this is a problematic statement. i'll start you off - the irrationality of incontinent emotionality is appropriate when working with children and women in labour but inappropriate in technical areas; men either do not experience emotion or have different kinds of emotions (cf "women's emotion") and/or are able to contain any emotions they happen to experience in a way that women just can't or won't; having emotions is the same as being emotional.
emotions are something you share with your friends, children, or your pet. it is not something you share with your co-workers and certainly not something to be shared between a supervisor and those they supervise.
interestingly, emotions don't seem to be something you share with your spouse.
if you have a bad day at home, your co-workers should not be aware of that fact, by word or deed, such as through passive-aggressive behavior. if you are going through a divorce, keep it to yourself or get counseling. don't vent at co-workers.
my experience generally has been that people tend to get short with other staff when their workloads are heavy, their patients are critically ill, or they're swamped. certainly having other stressors reduces most people's ability to maintain an even equilibrium, but i suspect this is the case regardless of sex.
when it is said that nurses eat their young, it would be more appropriate to say "women eat their young."
and yet the only nurse-to-nurse bullying i've witnessed in the last decade was done by a man. perhaps things are different in australia, where that vomitous phrase is unknown except to readers of this board.
this is not unique to nursing. i retired from the military and i can tell you from experience, the biggest problems i had with command involved women and their interpersonal relationships. after the military i entered the civilian work force in industry and government. again, the biggest problems i faced in management were with the interpersonal relationships of women. i am also a nurse with many years of experience and i can attest from that personal experience, the biggest day-to-day challenge is dealing with the interpersonal relationships of female staff members. with fifty men i won't have as many workplace issues that have to be addressed by management as i will with five women.
i appreciate that these are your experiences. i have no trouble believing that you had more problem with women.
please, do not misinterpret what i am saying. there are many very knowledgeable women in all fields of employment that are very professional. nursing is no exception. nursing, however, is comprised primarily of women. women tend to be far more emotional. emotionalism is not a word that comes to mind, or is used, when describing "professionalism." if you want to be considered a professional, keep your personal life and attitudes out of it and treat people with respect and patience. if you want to cop an attitude, gossip, complain to or about other people, join a club.
so to recap - some women are knowledgeable and professional, possibly because they're not emotional. but this is beyond most (or many) women. emotion and emotionality are essentially the same, and are antithetical to professionalism.
in management school we learned that a large factor that influences the reality that most managers are male is that women are often temporary to the work force because they leave work to get married, have children or raise a family. men traditionally don't interrupt their professional lives for these considerations.
indeed. not only do women have to interrupt their careers if they want to bear children, in the vast majority of cases the expectation of one or both parents is that the woman will put her career on hold to raise the child/ren. our society unquestionably sees childcare as a female concern, so much so that i've heard my own brotehr-in-law (among others) refer to caring for his own children as 'babysitting'. men are rarely expected to be involved full-time in their children's lives, and often seen as weak, submissive or unmanly if they raise their children - rare indeed would be the mother who refers to looking after her own child as 'babysitting'. menen are fully able, and often expect, to have a family and an uninterrupted career; women still have to chose to sacrifice one for the other.
i propose that a more realistic answer to this is that women often show too much emotionalism for management.
really? that's more likely a reason? okay, let's go with that.
often women say they don't want to be a manager because it goes against their nature.
i agree that not all women are cut out to be managers. i'm certainly not. but then again, nor are all men.
at other times, they are perceived as being too emotional to promote into management.
perceived by whom?
the bottom line - emotions show bias. bias shows favoritism. favoritism creates conflict. conflict earns the reputation as being one who eats their young when those that are empowered vent their emotions on those who are not empowered (the new employee).
this is a nice little leading argument that's sadly flawed.
""emotions show bias" - in what way do emotions in themselves show bias? i'd agree that emotions can (but don't necessarily) affect behaviour, but that's not close to being the same thing.
"bias shows favoritism" - i agree that favouritism is inappropriate in the workplace, and that bias can lead to favouritism. however, one can have all sorts of biases, acknowledge them, and through reflexive practice avoid having them meaningfully affect behaviour. for example, when doing the rostering i had a bias toward rostering people i liked and/or worked well with on the shifts i was working, and toward giving myself the shifts i preferred. but my duty was to the ward as a whole, and to fairness, and so those biases did not influence my behaviour.
"favoritism creates conflict" - absolutely.
"conflict earns the reputation as being one who eats their young when those that are empowered vent their emotions on those who are not empowered (the new employee).i'm going to assume you ran out of puff as you got to the end, because this is a little tangled and tortured. my suspicion, not having seen it, is that people who are unhappy (in their workplaces and/or lives) try to raise themselves by diminishing others, and do so by chosing those least well able to defend themselves, which is most often inexperienced staff. if the bullies truly were empowered they wouldn't need to seek validation of their own self-worth through the subjugation of others. conflict and favouritism may contribute to a hostile workplace, but other elements must also be present, including a willingness from management to tolerate and/or contribute to it. i've worked on wards where there was unambiguous favouritism (i was not among the favoured) but within a system that did not tolerate bullying, and there was no horizontal violence.
to anyone who's made it this far, well done :) i don't wholly disagree with bsn/mha/jd, but i suspect there are a number of factors that contribute to nursing workplace disharmony. i doubt very much that it's the emotional incontinence of women - for a start i'd expect to see significant change in those traditionally male-dominated professions that are becoming increasingly female-dominated, like medicine. yet, somehow, women manage to keep it together as surgeons, intensivists and emergency physicians. in any case, interesting though a gneder-based thread would be, i fear we've moved some way on from the op's issues, which (to refresh us all) were:
1. constant whining (life is hard, people who whine about nursing would whine about anything)
2. nursing culture part i (conflation of caring for with caring about)
3. nursing culture part ii (the ability of patterned scrubs to convey intellect)
4. nursing education (if most people think it's hooey we must not hve brains)
5. feminization (i/ women are traditionally disrespected; ii/enough with the pink and cutesy bears already)
6. lack of intellectual curiosity/knowledge (see also 3 & 5)
whichone'spink, BSN, RN
1,473 Posts
She won't eat it.