In my recent post about attending the Illinois Library Association’s annual conference, I mentioned that the public’s perception of nurses is often formed from the media’s portrayal of us. If you have a few minutes, watch this unique video of a nurse educating her companion about what nurses do by correcting his stereotypical misconceptions.
Thanks to Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH, Founder and Executive Director of The Truth About Nursing website and coauthor of Saving Lives: Why the Media’s Portrayal of Nursing Puts Us All at Risk for SHARE buttons on her site that allowed me to post her video here. Listen up!
Write Along with Me 
“If you have a few minutes, watch this unique video of a nurse educating her companion about what nurses do by correcting his stereotypical misconceptions.”
Lois, this one of the large contributing factors to the poor media and therefore perception of us. Not picking on you, but I’ll use as an example, the phrase, “IF YOU HAVE TIME” rather than ‘you may (or you will) find this interesting,’ or ‘you really ought to make time,’ or ‘after viewing this, I’d love to hear if it changed your mind about what nurses do.’
Very subtly it’s ingrained in nursing ‘subculture’ to say these things, to believe them to our core. The first article I wrote I entitled, “Just a Nurse?” To this day, I remember it as a ground-breaker for me and as one more nail in the coffin that Sandy Summers is trying to keep shut at the same time, the media tries to reopen.
All of us in healthcare, especially nursing, need to stick together and swim on this one.
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I’m coming in rather late on this to share an experience of mine. When my now 15 yr old great nephew was about 6 months old he became seriously ill with vomiting & diarrhea and was hospitalized. He was placed on an adult unit because the peds unit was full, and it was a challenge for non-peds nurses to care for him. They could not figure out his problem and I, as a one time peds nursing prof, was consulted frequently by my niece and sister (the grandma) via phone. Jacob actually “crashed” one day and only the intervention of a peds nurse walking by saved his life. As I was told more of his symptoms I began to suspect intussusception and was trying unsuccessfully to reach someone to relay that (a 6 month old does not usually display classic symptoms). Ultimately it was determined that that was actually Jacob’s diagnosis, and he was transported to Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis for surgery – a 2 hour ambulance ride. Later I learned that a nurse on the adult unit told my sister that she had suspected intussusception but didn’t say anything because she was “just a nurse!!” Jacob had about 1 hour to live when he had the surgery – but just think how much better it would have been for this nurse to say something and cause the docs to think in this direction earlier!! Fortunately, he came through the experience OK. I used this incident in my own teaching a number of times. Nurses are indeed a crucial and important part of the health care team!
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What a story! I wonder where the “just a nurse” identity started. I vaguely remember when I learned about rales and rhonchi in my first health assessment course (bachelor’s completion program) that I was told that I could no longer tell a doctor that I heard “rattling” in my patient’s lungs. So I’m thinking that maybe I’d been taught that originally in my diploma program, long before nursing students took health assessment courses. Something as trivial as this, of course, would make us feel like we were “just” or “only” a nurse and downplay our bedside observation skills. So glad students are not taught that way today.
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Lois,
“I wonder where the “just a nurse” identity started.” Lois, My aunt was a nurse and she used to tell me in her training, they were not to question physicians (see, I can’t call them doctors, a hang-up, or maybe I consider a doctor someone who has mastered his/her art). MDs haven’t, they’re just darn good at it, excel at it!
Anyway, my aunt tells me she needed to stand in a line with her classmates and needed to practice, “Yes, Dr. ‘x'” over and over. She also had to take training in obeying doctors’ orders NO MATTER WHAT THEY WERE. After so many years of that, no wonder we’re having such a hard time shedding the “Just a Nurse” personna.
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That sounds worse than my own experience. I was taught to give up my chair in the nurses’ station if a doctor walked in and also I was supposed to stand aside and let them on and off elevators first. No wonder I still have an elevator complex! I love it in my building when young people and men smile me out the door ahead of them.
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What’s the saying? Ten lashes with a wet noodle? I hear you, loud and clear!
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Lois, I don’t know how many times I was at a party and each guest identified his/her profession. When it came to my turn after the investment bankers, teachers, executives and sales people; I’d identify myself as, “Just a nurse.”
I got so sick and tired of downplaying my profession that required skill, intelligence, understanding, technical abilities and the list is soooo long; you know what is on that list. The lashes with a wet noodle is accepted for those years, but I straightened up to fly right!
That led to years of advocacy for patients and nurses and writing for the nursing profession, explaining the importance of what nurses do and trumpeting their cause.
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Your JUST experience reminds me of my former students who’d want to tell their patients they were JUST a nursing student. After I’d remind them they’d stayed up half the night preparing for that clinical day, they’d quickly see they were NOT JUST anything!
Keep up the good work of nursing. I agree with you 100%!
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Lois, when I was in nursing school, emphasis was being placed on nursing as a PROFESSION. Soon, the daughter of a classmate of mine took a plane to visit relatives. When this precocious 6 year old reached her destination, she was asked by doting aunts and grandparents, “So,, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I’d like to be a waitress in the sky” was my girlfriend’s daughter’s reply!
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Out of the mouth of babes… Since I wanted to be a stewardess when I was in high school, I guess I wanted to be a waitress in the sky too! I don’t remember having an emphasis on nursing as a profession until my bachelor’s completion program fifteen years after I’d graduated from a diploma program.
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