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 Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
Apparently, mostly everyone here believes that you have to have had experience in a particular career to be able to have an opinion about it. Therefore, those of you who feel this way have never had an opinion about a politician, doctor, lawyer, real estate agent, salesman, teacher, police officer, etc. Interesting.
No, you don't have to have experience in a career to have an opinion about it. Thankfully, no one has yet perfected a foolproof mind control technique. The difference lies in your calculation that your inexperienced opinion is more worthy of being shared with us than any other sentient being's inexperienced opinion. Hope that helps.
No, you don't have to have experience in a career to have an opinion about it. Thankfully, no one has yet perfected a foolproof mind control technique. The difference lies in your calculation that your inexperienced opinion is more worthy of being shared with us than any other sentient being's inexperienced opinion. Hope that helps.
PS Thanks, Ruby. :-)
It's so odd to me that a lot of people on this thread do not know how to comprehend well.
First of all, I am not the OP. Second of all, did the OP state that her inexperienced opinion is more worthy of being stated here than any other "sentient being's" inexperienced opinion?
My statement was in response to people saying that her opinion is completely irrelevant because she has no experience. Forgive me for thinking in terms of black and white, but this means that any person does not have the right to opinionate about any particular person in a professional position due to he/she not having experience in that position. That is BS.
If someone came here and posted that they were in their first semester of nursing school and that it was the best decision they made, their instructors were the brightest instructors they have ever worked with, and all of the nurses in the hospital are so smart and professional, would she still be told that her opinion is irrelevant?
Just some food for thought.
PS NICUdude, your post is right on. At least you stated backed up your statements with specific evidence and/or situations.
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
QUOTE=mfrancisco;4272904]It's so odd to me that a lot of people on this thread do not know how to comprehend well.
First of all, I am not the OP. Second of all, did the OP state that her inexperienced opinion is more worthy of being stated here than any other "sentient being's" inexperienced opinion?
It's funny that you are saying I don't comprehend well, and then tell me you aren't the OP when I never said you were the OP.
My statement was in response to people saying that her opinion is completely irrelevant because she has no experience. Forgive me for thinking in terms of black and white, but this means that any person does not have the right to opinionate about any particular person in a professional position due to he/she not having experience in that position. That is BS.
I wasn't saying the OP's opinion was completely irrelevant. Nor did I say that someone who isn't a nurse doesn't have the right to an opinion (obviously-it's that functioning grey matter thing) or even the right to express that opinion, (the protection of free speech thing) aka the freedom to opine. Thanks for the object lesson in irony your shot at my reading comprehension provided.
If someone came here and posted that they were in their first semester of nursing school and that it was the best decision they made, their instructors were the brightest instructors they have ever worked with, and all of the nurses in the hospital are so smart and professional, would she still be told that her opinion is irrelevant?
If someone is in their first semester of nursing school and they care to share their opinion of the first semester of nursing school, then great!! You now have experience in the first semester of nursing school. If you want to extrapolate that and assume you have enough time under your belt to scold the entire profession, then there will be a problem. Why is it so hard for you to understand the difference between thinking something and opening your yap about it to any and all comers?
When I was a nursing student I had opinions about everything and every one. Fortunately, I realized that as a student, my observations weren't likely to be gratefully received by the Establishment. In retrospect, some of those early opinions I still have to this day. Others have changed as I have learned and grown.
]PS NICUdude, your post is right on. At least you stated backed up your statements with specific evidence and/or situations.
1.Constant whining: Like you, nursing is not my first career. For me though, it is my last, and I sincerely wish it had been my first, as I would be that much farther along. My suggestion for you: more Zen, less pen. Beyond trivial annoyances is the job you want, and need to do.
Kudos for the bolded line alone...The rest was pretty good too.
My statement was in response to people saying that her opinion is completely irrelevant because she has no experience. Forgive me for thinking in terms of black and white, but this means that any person does not have the right to opinionate about any particular person in a professional position due to he/she not having experience in that position. That is BS.
It isn't that the OP has no right to express an opinion, it's that without the experience to measure it up, it isn't worth much. In this particular circumstance, the OP's opinion would most aptly be considered presumptuous and myopic. It isn't completely irrelevant, but comparatively (compared to the opinion of someone with some first hand experience on the subject) it lacks relevance - a great deal of relevance. Saying so acknowledges the understanding that most people have that first hand experience has a way of shaping an opinion in somewhat definitive and very personally relevant ways.
Both Ruby Vee and nursel56 have made similar analogies, but here's another just for fun... I wouldn't expect someone to take my advice on how to tune a carburetor because I've lived next to the freeway for 6 months and have seen a lot of cars drive by.
I've read enough of this and I'm about to unsubscribe. This thread is pretty much worthless when the OP started something and won't even come back to reply. Have a good night.
You said "you". You are talking to me and then to the OP at the same time. Whatever. Also, I wasn't referring to you when I mentioned people thinking her opinion was irrelevant. It was in response to the person who said exactly that.
Whatever, I am unsubscribing, too. I don't even really care. The ridiculousness was just bothering me, and I felt people here were REALLY trying to disregard someone's opinion. It's not like she was judging based on one hospital visit or by a TV show.
By the way, no one answered my question as to whether or not people would disregard her opinion had it been a favorable one.
When you are speaking to someone, you don't say "you" if you are referring to someone else.
By the way, no one answered my question as to whether or not people would disregard her opinion had it been a favorable one.
If the degree of favor had been equivalent to the degree of distaste shown here, I'd likely have told the OP to take off the rose colored glasses. An uninformed opinion is an uninformed opinion.
It's an interesting topic, for sure, and the OP probably wouldn't have been given such a frosty reception had he taken a more neutral stance. But when you start right off by telling people point blank and repeatedly that they exude stupidity, all pretense of neutrality goes right out the window.
You said "you". You are talking to me and then to the OP at the same time. Whatever. Also, I wasn't referring to you when I mentioned people thinking her opinion was irrelevant. It was in response to the person who said exactly that.
Whatever, I am unsubscribing, too. I don't even really care. The ridiculousness was just bothering me, and I felt people here were REALLY trying to disregard someone's opinion. It's not like she was judging based on one hospital visit or by a TV show.
By the way, no one answered my question as to whether or not people would disregard her opinion had it been a favorable one.
When you are speaking to someone, you don't say "you" if you are referring to someone else.
I'll answer. I did not disregard her opinion. What I did disregard was the notion that she felt she knew what was wrong with nursing without ever being one. Being a nursing student with 1-2 patients vs a nurse with a full load + are two different things. If she had come on and said wonderful things about nursing, I would have said the same thing..wait until you become one. There is good and bad with nursing.
I did find a few things strange about her/his post:
1. It was almost the first post they started.
2. There were no positives about nursing.
3. They started a fight, commented a few times and never came back.
I did read what she had to say, agreed with some of it, but pointed out that existed in every profession. I asked the op to come back after hitting the floor. I would like to see if that opinion changes or not.
I just read the original post. What a sad child you are. I have a good job, with good pay, good co-workers, in a good, respectful, teaching environment. Are we always happy? No, no one is. Are we perfect? Get real. Do we care, try hard, help each other, and love our patients? YES!
Nurses are respected, where are you that you aren't? Are you a student with a know-it-all attitude? Maybe the problem is yours. We have 9 nursing schools that rotate through our hospital. Ask these students looking over my shoulder at this if we treat them well.
Take another look around, and look at your attitude. Maybe that is what needs to change.
That guy belongs on the debate team not nursing school; he's only interested in dissecting everyone's response in hopes of proving himself right. His grossly excessive intensity at such an early point BEFORE his nursing career has even started tells me he will not survive long..... anyone in this field knows we must be incredibly flexible and adjust to every annoying personality type, such as his, and let it go by day's end.
And I disagree completely w/ his saying experience is not required- it is req'd if you're gonna make broad brush assessments about "the field" when you haven't even worked in it yet.
It's funny that you are saying I don't comprehend well, and then tell me you aren't the OP when I never said you were the OP. 
Now you've got it!! w00t!
nursel56
7,122 Posts
No, you don't have to have experience in a career to have an opinion about it. Thankfully, no one has yet perfected a foolproof mind control technique. The difference lies in your calculation that your inexperienced opinion is more worthy of being shared with us than any other sentient being's inexperienced opinion. Hope that helps.
PS Thanks, Ruby. :-)