One joy of working at a teaching hospital is the collegial relationships that I can form with our docs. A couple of days ago, I participated in a training exercise for some of our residents regarding interacting with patients and families after critical incidents and/or errors.
During this training, another nurse and I had the opportunity to share the nursing perspective and the docs were truly stunned at the revelations.
They were shocked to learn of the 'witch-hunt' and 'write-'em-up' behaviors that are so pervasive in nursing, the 'protect your license' mentality that so many of us feel so necessary, and our beliefs that our jobs and livelihoods often hang in the balance.
They really had no idea... and why would they? Except in the most egregious circumstances, docs do not lose their jobs nor their licenses. They do always consider being sued but they don't think of losing their ability to earn a living.
I shared with them my perceptions of the responses that I received after my own serious medication error and that the responses from the senior medical staff were much more supportive than that from the senior nursing staff.
I think it's so important that docs understand where nurses are coming from in the hopes of helping them to realize why we sometimes act the way that we do.
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What kinds of things do you wish that docs knew about the reality of being a nurse?
