Nurses want no part of it!

This blog was written by a doc in the States. It discusses some issues regarding nurses vs primary care physicians across the pond. He knows that the money hungry and greedy powers that be want to see nurses taking over primary care and he also understands that nurses want no part of this. It's true, we don't. I'll post some of DrRich's quotes and then head off on a tangent.

Occasionally some of us will escape the hell that is ward nursing and go into advanced roles...but most of of are escaping healthcare and/or the country all together.

This blogging doctor has A POSITIVE attitude towards his nursing colleagues. That's the main reason I posted this. He also "gets" that many don't want to do the noctor thing. Seems as if he isn't quite as paranoid and misinformed as his British counterparts.

http://covertrationingblog.com/medical-ethics/on-respecting-nurses


Some Excerpts:


"Much of what Gina (Code Blog), Strong One (My Strong Medicine), and Mother Jones (Nurse Ratched’s Place) have to say about the nursing profession is not all that surprising. That nurses are often disrespected and stereotyped by god-like doctors and poorly-informed patients is, sadly, an old story. But DrRich is struck by two things in Val’s podcast."

"Thanks to a) the growing nursing shortage, b) the inability to accommodate all the people who want to enter nursing, and c) the fact that those who have made it into the nursing profession are very smart people with “disturbingly” high ethical standards, we find that the healthcare system will soon need to re-evaluate its strategy in regard to primary care medicine."

Thanks. It is also very competitive and difficult to get into Nursing school in the UK. Too many applicants and not enough slots. A large number of the applicants have degrees in other fields and still are not getting in. The universities are able to pick the best applicants. Of course high quality people going into nursing is pointless if there is no jobs and they end up responsible for too many patients.

"First is that there is a long, long waiting list for entrance to nursing school. DrRich had no idea. He finds it uplifting that so many young Americans are lining up to enter this still-noble profession, especially at a time when nurses are so needed. It seems likely that at least some of this enthusiasm reflects the fact (and it is a fact) that the nursing profession is entering an era where the stereotypes and the disrespect seem ready to be torn down. While he has no special insight into the matter, DrRich finds it very likely that nursing school slots will be rapidly expanded (and nursing instructors will be adequately rewarded to staff these new slots), simply because there will be little other choice for our healthcare system.


Well that's a little naive but okay. The funding is not going to be there to train more nurses in the UK or the USA. Once they get onto the wards 2 out of 5 will burn out before their first year is up anyway. In the UK, managers think that 16 year old cadet nurses can just take over ward nursing while the ward nurses become pretend GPs. Yes we need more nurses but we are not going to get them or retain the ones we have in these hell hole wards. That's a fact here in the UK as well across the pond...............Anne

Second, it is striking that nurses seem to have figured out already that taking over primary care medicine from the rapidly-dwindling primary care physicians is a losing proposition. They are avoiding the opportunity in droves.

That, if nothing else, should tell us how smart nurses really are"

Yep...........Anne


"The healthcare system has done all this precisely to drive physicians out of the primary care business, for the explicit purpose of opening the primary-care doors to a profession it believes is more tractable than physicians - namely, the nurses."

Not only tractable but cheaper...........Anne

" The healthcare system sees nurses as professionals who (once they are duly certified in primary care medicine through respected testing organizations), will have just enough training to diagnose and treat the average patient (i.e., the ones with high blood, low blood, fat blood and sugar), and who will cheerfully, unquestioningly follow whatever guidelines are handed down to them from on high. And they will do all this for less pay and with less lip than the now-obsolete physician PCPs. These new practitioners of primary care medicine will be a perfect fit.
Except for one thing. The nurses want no part of it".

Ding Ding Ding. That is correct. We just want decently staffed wards, resources and a little back up so that we can do our jobs. If we don't get that we go, but not necessarily into the hell that is doctor land........Anne

The ultra paranoid british doc bloggers think that nurses want their jobs. This is bullshit. The truth is that even though we are being pushed that way by the powers that be the vast VAST VAST majority of us know that it is not a good idea. I am so happy that there is a doctor out there, somewhere who understands. How does DrRich know this? Go to his page.

The man is listening to and talking to real nurses.