To wonder why people are so keen to defend their profession

[Siepie]

It's something I see quite a lot on Mumsnet. I'm including my own job here: I'm a lecturer. I work hard and I think I do a good job. Several times on Mumsnet I've seen threads about problems DC are having at university, and lecturers posting along the lines of "that could never happen" / "a lecturer would never do that!" Meanwhile I'm thinking I've definitely worked with people I could imagine doing that!

It seems to be the same with a lot of public facing roles on here, e.g. teachers, doctors, receptionists, call handlers. I'd understand if a poster was complaining about all of your profession, but if someone's posting about a specific incident, why do posters automatically disbelieve them? Do you really think everyone with the same job as you is good at that job? If so you must have been very lucky with your colleagues!

@Fairislefandango

I don't think it is really synecdoche at all. It's a generalisation, or a sweeping statement. Macrocosm synecdoche - i.e. using a large or complete entity when you're really talking about a small part of it - is a figure of speech or shorthand,e.g. where you're using the word for an institution rather than specify the one or few representatives of the organisation you're really referring to.

Saying 'teachers' when you mean 'my child's bloody awful teacher', or 'the few teachers I know in real life' isn't synecdoche, it's an unfounded sweeping statement based on anecdote.

Thank you. That saved me the bother.

But as I'm here...

A synecdoche (/sɪˈnɛkdəki/ sin-NEK-də-kee,[1] from Greek συνεκδοχή, synekdochē, 'simultaneous understanding') is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something or vice versa.

So when you say 'teachers' and you don't mean all teachers, a synecdoche is precisely what that construction is far from.

Agree with @Fairislefandango about the use of synecdoche.

In answer to OP. At a very simple level I think that if anyone is committed to their profession there is a need to justify that commitment internally, otherwise what was the point of spending your entire working life in that profession

@cornflakedreams how fucking dare you make such sweeping statements about me. Just how ducking dare you. I have saved more lives than you’ve had hot dinners. You can ram your anger about me right up your own arse

@cornflakedreams very well said. The arrogance of some of the 'medical professionals' commenting on mn posts is profound.

It amazes me that those staff working in hospitals that have failed patients to such an extent don't seem to want colleagues to be held to account for killing people, like in Shropshire for example. 200 women/babies wasn't it.

In fact in 2018/19 the amount of compensation paid out for clinical negligence was £2.4bn with maternity compensation making up half of that. They constitute 10% of total claims.

@giggly

I’m a nurse and sick of seeming the NHS is shit/ not fit for purpose/ staff let my mother die etc. The one the other day about an elderly patient left on a trolley for hours comes to mind. Now I have worked with some individuals who are less than ideal, but murderers, no. Staff deliberately leaving patients for hours unattended, no. What I do see is insufficient staffing numbers who have triaged those most in need and yes that is their clinical decision not the relatives. I always go back to a poster and suggest they correct their post to “in my experience” which is a more reflective account. NHS services vary hugely across the country and Scotland’s runs completely independently from the rest of the UK so cannot be compared with Essex or wherever.

When your mother dies alone, in pain, cold, dehydrated and dirty, you tend to feel pretty pissed off and traumatised.

Seems it's also ok to only 'bash' certain jobs. Teachers are sacrosanct and nurses free game........

@Fairislefandango

I defend my profession (teaching) a lot, because non-teachers often talk such bollocks about it and parents often have a narrow and blinkered view because they only really care about how things affect their own child.

However, I would never deny that there are crap teachers - there are crap people in any job), and I would never defend a teacher who was behaving badly or unprofessionally.

Hats off to you, @Fairislefandango. My mum taught for forty years — I don’t know how you do it. Grown up former students would approach her in the shops and introduce themselves and tell her she was their favorite teacher. It was so sweet. Then again, there was a crazy music teacher in secondary who threw chairs at my classmates. Takes all kinds, but it takes a special person to teach. ❤️

[quote Lineofconcepcion]@cornflakedreams very well said. The arrogance of some of the 'medical professionals' commenting on mn posts is profound.

It amazes me that those staff working in hospitals that have failed patients to such an extent don't seem to want colleagues to be held to account for killing people, like in Shropshire for example. 200 women/babies wasn't it.[/quote]
I’m truly at a loss to understand how sweeping statements can be made about staff not wanting colleagues to be held accountable for other’s actions.
Both the BMC &NMC hold open investigations which anyone can access for any malpractice/ fit for practice cases.
I have refused to “sign for for practice “ competences to a number of student nurses over the years because I believed that they were indeed not fit to become registered nurses. That involves a whole shit of extra work, unpaid I may add.
I understand that when patients/ families have traumatic events or when they believe that care and treatment have failed them they are angry and there is recompense for that, but to swipe at a whole profession/ organisation is ridiculous.

I can defend my profession, it was a bloody hard slog to qualify, and I'm proud of it. That doesn't necessarily mean that I defend every individual working in it.
I posted quite recently that I'd worked with excellent qualified people, but also some truly crap ones, and similarly for people working in the field but describing thenselves as QBE.
Equally, there's specialist areas of my profession that I hold expertise in, but others where I only know the basics (& probably some where I know sod all).

I'm a journalist. A tabloid one at that. I defend my colleagues because people haven't got a clue about our work. We are sent death and rape threats EVERY DAY. Even those of us who do not lie or pull stories from MN, or lie about people.

Most of us have multiple degrees. We also do our best but have daily targets (could you write 10 well researched stories in 8 hours?).

We also don't get any expenses and most aren't even paid £30k a year in London. Most live in shared houses well into their 30s.

But people call us cunts, one tweet message threatened to rip my c*nt apart if he ever saw me. But we're treated like evil. We are trying. We all started with the best of intentions but we're not given the space money or time to do actual appreciated journalism.

In fact, recently weve had a whole team created to help the female journalists at my work cope with the threats of SA and Rape. They're that common.

Not the men. They're not sent any threats tbh. Of anything.

I used to only write beauty and fashion stories and men would try and find my address. And they'd email me threats of rape.

Surely journalism is one of the only careers many people think this is OK. In fact many encourage it. We are people.

I'm a nurse and I often do things outside of my job technically, because I really do care about my patients. But I have reported nurses who quite frankly I don't understand how they even passed their tests as they are a danger to my ward, not knowing how to deal with an emergency or sending a pt who passed away to the mortuary naked! With no dignity. There are good and bad in every profession and there's no need for people to take it personally but we all need to learn from others' mistakes, none of us know everything.

There really isn't much defending my profession. I'm old, cynical, and tired out. No point in trying to pretend.

But it pays well so there's that.

Rather than defend my 'profession' because it's not actually considered one, I defend the inaccurate assumptions around the reasons why something has happened, not necessarily the actual event or people involved - because I don't know what happened or who they are.

For example when people say that care workers 'will be trained' to deal with certain things (challenging behaviour usually) so anyone who can't deal with it is nasty, abusive, not someone you want caring for your granny - I will point out that the training is usually a dvd and a few questions or a half day session etc, and there's no ongoing training (required) no ongoing support (required) that it's all very much dependent on the employer/provider and there's very little in the way of ensuring there's adequate training and support - because people who have little experience of the sector sometimes automatically assume that those things are already in place.
Same goes for assumptions made about it being a low responsibility/low stress job because it's low paid - it's not, it's that it's not valued.

I do see a minority doing what you say and defending an actual experience, but I see people explaining the systematic failures, the pressures, the systems in place that lead to the types of situations that are being discussed more, and being shot down in flames by people who want someone to blame and the face(s) they dealt with are usually the scapegoat.

I think also people are often pretty myopic I these exchanges. This is especially true when in normal life people mainly interact with others in the same profession and therefore:
(1) glib and misleading comments about their own profession, or other professions, go unchallenged and gradually become accepted as 'fact' even though they're not; and
(2) sometimes people lose sight of what's specific to their profession and what's more widely true, eg every single person who talks about how much unpaid overtime is standard in their jobs as if that's not pretty normal for most professional roles; and
(3) no insight is developed into the context, importance and key issues of other professions, which very often comes to a head when personally awful things happen like a parent having a horrible death in an underfunded hospital or a child with obvious SEN floundering in an underfunded school, and also comes to a head when people on MN complain about people in your profession.

I feel a stab of defensiveness sometimes (I'm a civil servant, which also means a lot of what I do I can't talk about and 'justify' - both frustrating and liberating!) but I do try to recognise it for what it is and let go.

I wanted to also say to the pharmacist upthread - i have direct recent-ish experience of the pharmacist picking up on a major error by a doctor and intervening. Super grateful he did - the implications for my DC if he'd just doled out the prescription and left me to decide whether the patient leaflet was reason enough to not use something the doctor had prescribed would have been severe.

As a teacher, I get annoyed when people use incorrect assumptions about my job as part of their argument. Or when people generalise or use anecdata and seem to think we're all workshy harridans who shout and have terrible SPaG.

But I won't defend a teacher on a thread where it is clear, insofar as we can judge with what the OP says, that they are in the wrong. And there are plenty. I've seen terrible teachers in my experience and also some amazing ones. It's the same for any job.

@SD1978

Seems it's also ok to only 'bash' certain jobs. Teachers are sacrosanct and nurses free game........

I'm guessing you haven't been around MN for long... The teaching profession is most definitely NOT sacrosanct on here!

I think the ones who defend all of their colleagues on anything are probably part of the problem. Someone who says 'that would never happen' clearly doesn't open their eyes ever. There are shit people in EVERY profession. Yours is not ever going to be 100% only good people. Ever.

There are shit doctors, nurses, teachers, architects, it staff, lecturers, lawyers, farmers, shop workers, civil servants, managers, accountants etc. There are also many good people in all the above professions and more.

Denying that just shows you're an idiot and you're part of the problem. As a pp said, by denying it, you are silencing a big problem. And in some jobs, that means deaths increase. You might not be doing your job badly, but you are refusing to accept there are problem people. There always are, get over that. By not accepting it, you are making the situation worse. It can only be fixed by being open about it.

I've met many nurses and doctors, either from personal experience or seeing care administered to relatives. Many are amazing and very caring. Some I would like to have fired immediately and ensure they are never trusted with human life again. I've had many lecturers/teachers, most were great. Some were actually stupid and obviously lazy.

I'm a nurse, and can get very tired of the nurse bashing threads. I never see threads about a reasonable issue. I very often see threads where people have misunderstood what nursing is and posters want to buy in to the misogynistic notion that nurses should be "perfect, servant-like, self-sacrificing angels". I challenge it, because it is misogyny.

I'm a police officer so I've had my tin hat on under several user names for quite some time now.

human nature ?

I feel like I want to challenge the perception (in Ireland anyway) that civil servants have an easy life. My dept/organisation is understaffed deliberately and the volume of work heaped upon us is unbelievable. And yet I've to read in the Waterford Whisperers that Civil Servants do 30 minutes of work a day and will get a fantastic pension for their efforts.

I used to work in insurance and the amount of people who said jokily oh I'm not looking to buy insurance, as though the only roles are sales roles. I used to say well unless you own a fleet of oil rigs or a south american insurance company, I couldn't take your business.

Because for some people their profession is a core part of their identity, so they interpret any criticism as an attack on them

@cornflakedreams are you for real, all of those statements ''people like you'' and comparing giggly to a child killer. Wow.