Nurses: Who Are They?

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

The average age of an RN in 2004 was estimated to be 46 years. I will be 44 in May, so I am approaching that average. They also tend to be white (88%) and female (95%).

Although this essay is not a discussion of the nursing shortage, there is one. There are no doubts about it, we absolutely need to be recruiting more nurses all over the world. Of course, universities are still offering nursing courses, they’re just not being taken up. There are even courses on the Internet, like this bsn to dnp leadership programs online in nursing, though this is for already qualified nurses. If there was more awareness on what it means to be a nurse, perhaps there’d be a change. This is particularly true in Australia for example where nurses for the elderly are in short supply. With this in mind, if you are considering a career in nursing, completing a qualification in elderly care could be advantageous for your future job prospects. To learn more, try researching ‘Certificate iii in individual support Melbourne‘ online.

The fact that we have a nursing shortage is often not a central issue when we discuss the “health care crisis” in America, but it should be. According to surveys, all 50 states will be affected by the nursing shortage in varying degrees by the year 2015. By the year 2020, there will be a nursing shortage of approximately 340,000.

Clearly, areas in which there could be recruitment would be among men and non-Caucasian women. The reasons for the shortage are vast and varied. My own theory is that years ago when my mother became an RN, there were few career choices for women. Now, women have a broader range of options and while nursing does pay well, there are other sectors that do as well and they don’t involve shifts, weekends and holidays. The older nurses and I like to joke at work that a) our retirement plan is death and b) we will be caring the hell out of our patients in the coming years as we totter into rooms in on walkers or zip in on electric scooters. It is amusing.

It wasn’t my dream to become a nurse, although when I was growing up, I was always asked if I was going to be a nurse “just like mom”, when I got older I found it insulting nobody could conceive of a different future for me. My mother did not subject me to that. She told me not to be a nurse. However, I found myself going to nursing school at age 29 after flopping around in the job market doing contract jobs I actually liked but so no future in and jobs I altered my resume to get because I needed to eat and pay rent. So, yes, I lied on my resume to get jobs, specifically eliminating some of my education and manufacturing some experience that nobody checked up on. I did not want to be super nurse, be an angel, save the world, or do anything heroic. I wanted a job and I did worry when I entered training that I wouldn’t actually like it or even be competent at it. Unlike many of the younger students, I knew what I was getting into and had already worked shifts at poorly paid jobs, so the idea of working on a Saturday night was not a huge burden.

That I ended up in oncology and working with children was an accident. I like kids but not in a romantic, cutesy, mushy way. I have had them call me names, swing and make contact, tell me they hate me, had teenage boys ask for a younger prettier nurse, get spit at, bitten, the list goes on. When the younger kids told me they hated me I said I know you do, but I still like you. I have a particular approach that helps me when parents or kids are unpredictable and mean: compassion is a philosophy. Everybody deserves it even when we don’t feel like offering it, nothing and everything is personal, and this to shall pass. Now that I am a supervisor, I repeat “this to shall pass about a hundred times a night”. The other tactic my fellow supervisors and I use especially when we are already aware that it will be a challenging and unpleasant night is to say: even if it is a bad night we are gonna find some good in it. It works, when you deal with life and death and the unfairness of it all you really need a coherent philosophy to survive and avoid burnout. Most of my colleagues are Christians and I am not. I don’t make a public statement about it, but most of the ones I have worked with for a long time are aware of it.

I don’t represent a wider group, I have no insight into whether my ideas correspond with those of the average nurse. I suspect, although I cannot prove, that RNs tend to be either apolitical, or mildly conservative/traditional in beliefs. I do know in conversation with the staff I supervise there is a perception that men get promoted much more quickly in nursing, and that if nursing was a male dominated profession, the starting wage would be higher. According to “payscale” the average wages break down like this: an RN with less than one year of experience makes about 21.00 dollars an hour, an RN with 1-4 years experience makes about 23.00 dollars an hour, an RN with 5-9 years experience makes about 26.00 dollars an hour, an RN with 10-19 years of experience makes about 28.00 dollars an hour and those with 20 or more years experience about 30.00 dollars an hour. However, there are high wage areas and low wage areas, and making up to thirty bucks an hour in Mississippi ( which nobody in reality does) is much different than making that wage in NYC or San Francisco. Once working conditions, stress, shifts, and the tendency of hospitals to blame RNs for every error made even when it is not so, are factored in the wages do not seem so generous, but I am entirely biased. I am also the “house supervisor” at night, I can call a higher authority to address complicated issues, but when things go wrong, I am taken to task, and when things go well I rarely get the credit. I am fairly compensated for these responsibilities, I have a thick skin, and I am always willing to admit when I am wrong, and I consult the people I supervise and get their feedback. I supervise primarily younger RNs, they frequently tell me how I should be doing my job. I accept good ideas, and I also tell them when they are full of baloney.

One of the more frustrating aspects of my profession is not the work itself, or the working conditions, or the constant need for training to adapt to new technologies, procedure and medications, or when people are rude, over the line, and down right out of control because that is in essence all part of the “job”, it is the public perceptions and presentations of nursing and nurses in the MSM. If I had a dollar for every time I heard a salacious comment about giving or getting a bed bath from some brainless dolt well…. let’s say I could entirely finance things here. Yes, I do and have given bed baths and no they are not sexy or fun. For many young men and young women already struggling with body image issues because of illness, and are immobile they are vaguely humiliating and stressful. For many elderly people bed baths are just another reminder that they can’t care for themselves.

With a few notable exceptions, nurses are portrayed in TV and in movies that revolve around medical dramas as absent, silly, slutty, gossipy, mean, vindictive, and stupid. In the drama “House”, the hospital appears to operate entirely without nurses and makes the occasional snide references to them. I laugh in hysterics whenever I see the team of doctors administering lab tests, medications or taking patients to MRIs. If a doctor talked to me or my staff the way I have seen dialog on that program, I would be having a serious conversation with them followed by an email to their supervisor, my director, and a sit down meeting about communication. I do see realistic images of nurses on those Discovery Health programs and once in a while on ER. In general, when I see a resident covering my floor going down the wrong path, I tell them straight up. If they ignore me, I go above their head to a fellow, present my case/concerns and usually they listen. When we do nightly rounds we will argue with the doctors and push the issues we believe are paramount. In other words, the relationship is usually interactive, not a top down one. My particular institution may well be atypical. When residents complain to me about getting too many “stupid” phone calls from RNs, I tell them they could have gone and obtained their MBA if they don’t wish to receive late night phone calls, and they should be grateful that we have staffing ratios that allow the close monitoring of patients. They often don’t like me much. My job is not to be liked by the doctors, my job is to help the staff care for patients.

This website that focuses on many nursing issues does a superlative job of cataloging and analyzing the images that RNs often battle.

And apparently all nurses really want to do is “land” a doctor.

Or, perhaps, nurses are not actually medical professionals, just hand maidens who look cute and darn it don’t they know it.

If nursing was a male dominated profession would sexual imagery even be a major component of public perceptions? Would the sexual imagery mutate into a heroic and dynamic meme instead of a servile one? If nurses had a national union, would they be able to successfully counter negative imagery or is it too deeply embedded to be undermined by a counter offensive? There are also several other good reasons to ask about how the unionization of nurses at a national level could positively impact the health care system.

As usual, I have addressed a host of ideas, observations, and opinions and neglected to explore all of them thoroughly. I have danced around several sub-issues that probably require further exploration in order to paint a big canvass and for that I apologize. I purposefully offered a snapshot of my job as a way of explaining why for example I find the stereotyping of nurses so disturbing.

What do you think?