To expect a Nurse lead by example?

[shouldacoulda]

And practice what they preach.
Have just clocked the overweight nurse that did my recent health check, smoking like a chimney and munching on a chocolate bar!

This is somebody who sat there and lectured me on cutting down on carbs, eating oily fish once a week, not smoking and to drink in moderation.
It's a bit rich!

We expect fitness trainers to be fit and lead healthy lifestyles.
So, surely somebody who's job it is to advice people on healthy lifestyle choices should also be fairly fit, of a decent weight and not be puffing away like a chimney.
How can we take their advice seriously otherwise?

Or am I being unreasonable? (I know they work long hours and there's a lot of stress), but surely the ones that are doing the health checks and doling out 'healthy living advice' should be an advertisement for what they're saying?

Well OK OP, tell us how it should be done.

Tell us what do you do for a living, and how you live by those principles every moment of your waking life, whether you happen to believe in them or not.

Like some kind of unthinking, joyless, drone.

YABU - failing to follow her own advice doesn't mean that the advice isn't good. She doesn't have to be a role model, just be trained, educated and professional enough to provide the service that she is paid for - she isn't an 'advert' If you choose not to take her advice because she is overweight and smokes, then you won't be 'teaching her a lesson', you will be cutting off your nose/clogging your arteries/reducing your lung function to spite your face/selection of internal organs.

I'm a nurse and I do feel rather ashamed and embarrassed when I give out advice to do with weight and exercise

I suspect anyone daft enough to imagine that your weight impinges on your ability to deliver professional advice is probably too daft to benefit from said advice. I wouldn't worry

Oooh sock puppets too!

How fun.

Are you all Fat smoking nurses then?!

Erm no no and no

not drunk then. that makes your post even stupider. if you're a 'big girl', why are you expecting other adults to be role models for you? can you not digest the advice given as it is and decide whether or not to follow it? is that too complicated?

camping no those chocolate bars don't 'keep you going' they keep you locked in a sugar cycle.... But you know that. You go in a shop and buy them. It could easily be a healthy alternative you buy.

Op... I kind of agree with you. Our practice nurse can't shout too loud about her health message when she's sat there 5 stone overweight. She obviously has no faith in it

fawltydoge, your post is too silly wo warrant a reply.

Tell us what do you do for a living, and how you live by those principles every moment of your waking life, whether you happen to believe in them or not. Like some kind of unthinking, joyless, drone.

So living a healthy lifestyle with moderation and exercise which can be enjoyable makes you and unthinking joyless drone? wow. Its mad how people on MN think, that being fat and unhealthy should be praised and mollycoddled

I do believe you're right Sienna

What kind of halfwit thinks nurses 'preach' to patients?

I'm not fat, I don't smoke and I'm not a nurse.

I am however intelligent enough to realise that nurses are there to give medical advice...not to set an example.

Parents should be the ones trying to set an example to their children imo

If my parents had spent every day eating junk, smoking, getting drunk off their faces and taking little to no exercise while telling me I was not allowed to do any of the above because it's bad for me, I would have decided the pair of them were hypocrites and ignored them.

Whereas if a nurse did all of the above, I'd just think 'ahh well, she's paid to advice me not to do those things'.

Our practice nurse can't shout too loud about her health message when she's sat there 5 stone overweight. She obviously has no faith in it

It occurs to me that if I were to seek advice from a HCP about losing weight, perhaps an overweight HCP might be able to fully empathise, to understand any destructive relationship I may have with food, to disseminate the information without looking like it was "preaching".

As an overweight smoking nurse I regularly dole out public health advice as that is what I'm paid to do. I also tell my patients I know things like losing weight and stopping smoking are hard, I know because I'm doing both. Because I'm a human not some bleeding robot.
Nurses work and to a large extent live to a set of standards set out in our professional code. Which states we act with honesty, compassion and care. Not that we stop smoking or never have more than our recommended intake of alcohol.
FFS.
Nurses are real people. We're not reincarnations of Florence. We have lives, families, worries of our own that we lay a the door when we slog out guts out in an over worked, underpaid and overly judged job.
Rant over.

Ok, so my list extends to priests, police and parents.

Any more? Must begin with the letter P.

Would any of you be happy to go to a dentist who had rotten teeth?

Or would you isten to a hygenist lecture you on how to keep your teeth clean when she had smelly breath?
Don't think so.

Nurses are real people. We're not reincarnations of Florence.

She wasn't such a paragon of perfection. She just got a very good press

listen

Perhaps overweight nurses could actually empathise more with overweight patients?

Doesn't have to be a negative thing

Another way of looking at it Daffy.

If a skinny nurse sat there and told me to lose weight, a bit of me would probably (wrongly) think "and what do you know about how hard it is?".

But I recognise that is my problem not hers, the OP should do likewise.

Okay so this would also include:

No advice from a midwife who hasn't had a baby
No advice from a gynaecologist who doesn't have a vagina
No advice from an oncologist who hasn't had cancer

Etc

Logic fail.

I must admit, if the dentist knew what they were doing with my teeth, and didn't cause me harm, I wouldn't care at all about the condition of their teeth.

Why would I?

Okay OP well you just shop around until you get a nurse you like better.

It'll probably cost you (I doubt the NHS will indulge you) and the advice will be the same, but if it makes you happy and you have time to waste you go for it.

Christ OP

So the nurse told you to lose weight, give up smoking and drink a bit less

She really did hit a nerve if it made you this angry

Just ignore her advice and go have a fag and a chocolate bar

All this anger is bad for your health...

[no comment]

I'm a nurse and will leave my work where it belongs. At work.
My duty of care is to my patients during my paid, working hours. My lifestyle outside work is irrelevant.