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.
QUOTE=mfrancisco;4273512]You said "you". You are talking to me and then to the OP at the same time. Whatever.
Huh?? . . .well, I can say for sure that I was never talking to the OP when I typed "you" because I've accepted that the OP is long gone and is never coming back. So, I was talking to you if I quoted your post in my reply. The only other thing I might have meant was the "you" meaning a group. In the south that would be "y'all", in PA "you'uns", in Spanish "ustedes".
.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.
I guess I got thrown off by your quoting my message in your reply. I guess I shouldn't have assumed you were responding to me when you did that.
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 a new student posted something here that was as positive as the OP's was negative, I would think her impressions were just as unrealistic as the actual OP(sarjasy) was. The difference lies in the fact that people who are smeared as a group bite back harder than the positively judged say thank you. But the underlying principle is "don't judge a person until you've walked a mile (or 5?) in their shoes".
When you are speaking to someone, you don't say "you" if you are referring to someone else.
OK. Thanks. So you were referring to me when you mentioned people thinking her opinion was irrelevant? Because if you weren't, then you did what you are now telling me NOT to do. Or something. You're right. This whole thing is hopelessly off the rails.
On one message board I post on, there's a place called the "Thunderdome". It's where certain threads go to die, its carcass riddled with irrelevant pictures and memes. This thread should have been closed days ago.
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
I understand from another thread here, that this is Zombie Awareness Week. Perhaps it is in this spirit that this thread refuses to die. Just as you think it has gasped it's last, it draws in an unsuspecting lad or lass who reads the first post, gets all p1ssed, skips through the hundreds of replies and writes a reply, bumping it ever forward to page 1, where it lurches to life yet again. The END. (or is it? mwa-hahaaa. . .) :dzed:
I understand from another thread here, that this is Zombie Awareness Week. Perhaps it is in this spirit that this thread refuses to die. Just as you think it has gasped it's last, it draws in an unsuspecting lad or lass who reads the first post, gets all p1ssed, skips through the hundreds of replies and writes a reply, bumping it ever forward to page 1, where it lurches to life yet again. The END. (or is it? mwa-hahaaa. . .) :dzed:
Oops I think that unsuspecting lass was me didn't read all the replies just the OP...sorry for waking the dead lol. Oh poo...am I bumping again?! :doh:
Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.
Oops I think that unsuspecting lass was me didn't read all the replies just the OP...sorry for waking the dead lol. Oh poo...am I bumping again?! :doh:
omg!!! I just did it, too. I wouldn't recommend reading all 268 posts, anyway. Especially on the weekend..====shudder====
This is funny. For all your comments, you seem to me complaining and possibly even whining. I am a nurse and recall meeting many RNs that I didn't want to be like when I was in school. So instead of complaing and pointing out all the bad stuff in nursing, I have made it a goal to be the best preceptor I can to new nurses and student nurses. I also attend many conferences in my specialty and keep up on journal articles.
I think a better approach would be to finish nursing school and then be a change agent. Those who can do and the others complain.
There have been too many posts for me to address them all, so instead I'll address a few of the recurring themes. I'd also like to add some clarifications about my original post.
First, I'd like to reiterate that I am not talking about all nurses in my OP, only a subset. Secondly, I never said that certain nurses are dumb, only that certain things they do/don't do make them appear that way to others. Finally, my entire post was about the perception of nurses by other health care professionals - not by patients or other nurses. Here is what I wrote originally: "The #1 complaint among nurses that I have seen is a lack of respect by other health care professionals." That statement was what my entire post was about.
The three recurring themes in the responses that I want address are (1) that my lack of experience disqualifies me from commenting, (2) my tone and intent, and (3) the surprising response to my comments about printed scrubs.
(1) I simply don't understand how my lack of experience has any bearing on the topics at hand. I don't see how I need 10 years of RN experience to point out that teddy bear characters on a nursing school's web page don't attract men to nursing. How would RN experience better qualify me to point that I have been exposed to an abnormal amount of whining, or that my fellow students and nurses that I have been exposed to don't take science seriously? Why do I need years of experience to point out the obvious that many nursing diagnoses are totally lacking in reality? Or that scrubs with flowers all over them don't look professional? What I've said is either right or wrong and experience has nothing to do with it.
(2) My tone may have sounded harsh to some, but as I mentioned in my original post, my post was a result of frustration. I was venting. Perhaps it was a bad idea on my part for posting a "negative" post as my first major post to this board. I believe that there are many awesome things about nursing, which is why I chose it over many other healthcare fields (pharmacy, physician assistant, optometry, others). I'm as excited as ever about my career choice. I was merely pointing out what I see as problems in our profession. All professions have problems and for any profession to improve, those in it must be honest about their problems.
(3) Of the six different points I made, I was genuinely surprised at the volume of responses about scrubs. I apparently upset many of you. Most of the posts defending printed scrubs, however, have focused on how patients perceive them. My statements, however, were not about patient perceptions, but the perceptions of others in health care.
Others thought I was focusing on an unimportant issue. Not only was it only one of 6 points that I made, but it's an important enough issue that researchers have actually studied it extensively, and in none of the studies do printed uniforms rank highest. These studies have looked at both patient and colleague perceptions.
Well, I am suprised that the OP came back to defend herself..and although I should just let this die...I just have to say something!
OP- you say that the bigest problem with nursing is "lack of respect from other healthcare professionals" and then go on to tell us why we are not being respected by them.
I disagree.
The biggest problem with nursing is that other health care professionals DUMP EVERYTHING on the nurse! And the poor nurse is just too overwhelmed to give a crap if she is being respected.
I think that unsuspecting lass was me didn't read all the replies just the OP...sorry for waking the dead lol. Oh poo...am I bumping again?! :doh:
nursel56
7,122 Posts
Huh??
. . .well, I can say for sure that I was never talking to the OP when I typed "you" because I've accepted that the OP is long gone and is never coming back. So, I was talking to you if I quoted your post in my reply. The only other thing I might have meant was the "you" meaning a group. In the south that would be "y'all", in PA "you'uns", in Spanish "ustedes".
I guess I got thrown off by your quoting my message in your reply. I guess I shouldn't have assumed you were responding to me when you did that.
If a new student posted something here that was as positive as the OP's was negative, I would think her impressions were just as unrealistic as the actual OP(sarjasy) was. The difference lies in the fact that people who are smeared as a group bite back harder than the positively judged say thank you. But the underlying principle is "don't judge a person until you've walked a mile (or 5?) in their shoes".
OK. Thanks. So you were referring to me when you mentioned people thinking her opinion was irrelevant? Because if you weren't, then you did what you are now telling me NOT to do. Or something. You're right. This whole thing is hopelessly off the rails.