To be pissed off at being 'just' a nurse?

[bottleofwater]

Three times in the last week Ive had different family members making sarky comments regarding some recent achievements & promotion at work.

Usually comments along the lines of "Oh Florence Nightingale you will be telling the Doctors what to do now" " You will be a surgeon in no time" & " What do nurses know about blood pressures, they are not doctors".

Im so fed up of how its like being a nurse is rubbish & that only Doctors are of any value

Also comments regarding how I dont make the same amount of money as other family members but thats probably another thread!

Not sure what they think nurses actually do but aibu to be pissed off at the constant sneering at me?

Yanbu.

As a nurse I have been told by family I will never have a nice house,afford nice holidays or have nice things my reply is simply that I must get a lot more job satisfaction than they do in their mundane jobs whilst being surrounding by their materialistic crap and big egos....

This is inappropriate. As somebody who spent three months with my daughter at hospital, I grew to recognise how hard-working, knowledgeable and really really underappreciated nurses were. Nurses are overworked and significantly underpaid. You're not 'just a nurse', you're somebody who makes a difference.

patients when they kick off or are dumped through the door by the police cos they dont want them destroying the police station.

I'm a police officer and you couldn't be further from the mark. Custody cells regularly get completely destroyed and unless a detainee is presenting with a physical or mental health complaint,, including a drug/alcohol overdose or simply just saying 'I want to kill myself' we want them in custody more than anywhere else. It takes precious officers off front line for them to sit in a hospital waiting room for three hours.
But do carry on with your misguided aspersions, by all means.

BiglyBadgers

The key word is “might”. There is no certainty so why answer with such confidence!? Lol

Oh well, they might claim to be an antelope. Why did you say it then if it had no meaning?

No meaning? Of course it has “meaning”. Incidentally, the word “might” means something too.

(Sweeping statements - such as yours - are lazy.)

But do carry on with your misguided aspersions, by all means.

Hmm. There are a lot of them about.

The idea that nurses are “Just doctor’s handmaidens” is ridiculous. I used to be a nurse.

Nurses really are the Cinderella healthcare profession. Radiographers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, dietitians etc are seen as professionals. But not nurses. Yet they are all degree qualified and start off as band 5s in the NHS!

Nurses were the last healthcare profession to be degree trained. For years they have been badly trained and looked down on. Calling it a vocation is just a way of keeping a largely female dominated profession in its place.

Recently I had a fracture and in A&E I was treated and diagnosed entirely by a nurse practiontioner and radiographer. No doctor required.

I used to work at an NHS walk in centre. We were all nurses and able to diagnose and also treat with medication - antibiotics, the morning after pill etc. We also knew when to refer to A&E for medical treatment but by and large, we were able to deal with patients without referring them to a medical colleague.

When I was a flight attendant I would sometimes get “oh but you aren’t as important as a PILOT are you.” I enjoyed pointing out that whilst I couldn’t fly the aircraft, the airline did need me there for safety and security as commercial aircraft require at least one, trained and competent flight attendant per 50 seats or the aircraft cannot take off. CAA law

Some of the arguments being presented are plain daft and show some people are in denial.
Medical students - i.e. those training to be doctors - are the creme de la creme as Miss Brodie would say. Of COURSE these people are academically gifted and thoroughly tested during the long period of their training.

”Medical education in the UK is wide and diverse. On average, undergraduate
courses last between 4 and 6 years. After their undergraduate training, newly qualified doctors undergo 2 years of foundation programme training before choosing a specialty. In obstetrics and gynaecology (O&G), specialty training takes 7 years.”

Nurses do not require to have high entrance qualifications nor are they subjected to the rigour of a medical degree.
There is a hierarchy right there - even before you hit the workplace.

(Sweeping statements - such as yours - are lazy.)

Inserting might into a sentence does not stop it from being a sweeping statement that's only apparent purpose was to denigrate an entire profession (or multiple professions). My statement was based on fact. A person who wheels a trolley to a theatre is a porter and would call themselves such. Yours was just pointless and rude conjecture.

*...that's only apparent purpose...”

Do you mean the only purpose of which is...?

Nurses do not require to have high entrance qualifications nor are they subjected to the rigour of a medical degree.

Nurses are subject to the rigours of a nursing degree which takes 3-4 years and is by no means a walk in the park to get into. Many will go on to do postgraduate qualifications such as those for nursing practitioner or specialist roles.

Nobody is arguing that a nurse is the same as a doctor. They require different qualifications and have different roles. This, however is not an indication of worth and I can't really under why you are so desperately trying to make out that nurses are worth less because they aren't doctors.

washington
Maybe in your local poluce station this isnt the case but in my friends experience she has actually witness first hand police bringing people high as kites/aggressive/ off thier meds and pushing them through the door with luttle warning saying "we know they have been patients here so we brought them in for you to deal with" despite the fact there is no bed free, then buggering off to let staff manhandle them into the isolation room till they come down enough to treat.
It happens whether you like it or not. My friends partner had his nose broken by one of these unexpected 'guests'.

I wish this hierarchy view would stop. We are all part of the same multidisciplinary team whether we are nurses, doctors, physios, OTs, pharmacists etc and our aim is the same, to work effectively together to deliver the best patient care.

If you cannot see the difference - which is plain to see - then carry on thinking as you do.

...that's only apparent purpose...”

Do you mean the only purpose of which is...?

Phew, I'm glad we can both agree that the basic points of my argument are correct and move onto pointless and anal grammar discussions.

If you cannot see the difference - which is plain to see - then carry on thinking as you do.

I will. I was just waiting for your permission obviously.

Nurses still need good A-levels to enter the nursing degree programme and I agree that my BSc was not easy!

Doctors are of course very intelligent and well educated. I don’t think anybody is disputing that. None of the healthcare professions are “better” than another one. They require different training and are entirely different roles but the NHS needs all of them to work.

Unfortunately, nurses are always put down. The Daily Mail commenters are always moaning about nurses. There is a reason the UK is short of 40,000 nurses. They are badly treated and the public seem to delight in putting them down.

Why are so many people attempting to perpetuate the opinion that doctors are 'better' or 'more important' than nurses. The jobs are completely different as a general rule but whatever some people like to think an experienced nurse will be guiding junior doctors on thier first time on a ward. Specialised nurses and nurse practitioners will have as much knowledge on an area of medicine as many doctors have. They will have undertaken training and further degrees and are not 2nd best. I have heard doctors saying they couldn't do what nurses do as they do not have the skillset to do hands on care. It doesnt make them bad at thier job just different.
Nurses are not 'poor mans doctors' it is a different job with different skills and knowledge needed.

Nurses report to thier own hierachy not to a doctor.

Casulty used to drive me mad when doctors ordered nurses around like dirt and threatened to have them disciplined if they werent worshipping at thier feet etc probably why so many people think we are doctors handmaidens.

Yanbu at all! I've been called 'just a nurse'. Yep, 3 years doing a degree, 10000 word dissertation whilst working full time on a placement. 12 years on and I'm still "just a nurse".

Whilst my son was having suction (sucking sabot out of his nose with a tiny hose pipe) the rather green-looking student doctor half-jokingly told ne she'd become a doctor not a nurse because she couldn't do the gross jobs.

Even with two people with identical grades and academic possibility , some will want to be doctors and some will want to he nurses. Give met some amazing, intelligent nurses who I'm sure could have trained to be doctors if they'd wanted to but aspects of one career over another appealed more. Neither is better than the other.

You need both (and many more( to make a hospital etc function and they need to be working together

Nurses do not require to have high entrance qualifications nor are they subjected to the rigour of a medical degree.

Oh, my first class honours degree in nursing must be in my head then!

I am not a nurse nor have I ever been, I am however a midwife (and am called a nurse on almost a daily basis). The midwifery degree is similar to the nursing degree and it certainly is tough, I don't know why a pp feels these degrees don't require high entry requirements. They certainly do and entry is extremely competitive.

The doctors that I work with are great, they are generally respectful towards us and value our input. To whoever argued that we don't have autonomy, oh I wish this were true! The responsibility of my job frequently terrifies me. Some women don't see a doctor through their whole pregnancy, labour and postnatal care. Doctors often are only involved if we identify an issue and refer to them. The responsibility literally keeps me awake at night, worrying.

I appreciate the thread is about nurses but midwives are very much equivalent.

@MissDuke, I am amazed that you think that midwives and nurses are somehow 'equivalent'? IMO, midwives, particularly those working within midwifery led units have true autonomy. We're in agreement there. Your opinion that nurses and midwives have similar roles, however, is completely lost on me.

I find it strange that in the USA, there are not many midwives and OB-GYNs deliver 92% of babies.

Yet 28 American mothers die for every 100,000 births —  compared to 8 U.K. mothers dying per 100,000 births.

reborn have you ever worked in a nurse led Service? Why is it so difficult for you to understand that nurses and midwives agents just doctors maids!

"Doctors are of course very intelligent and well educated"
Well educated in the medical field. Most doctors are have had limited exposure and limited awareness of broader general knowledge, politics, humanities etc. Other degrees produce more educated individuals.