Nursing should be re-named?

[SunshinePie]

Was pondering over this recently, is calling “nursing” is a bit old fashioned? You now need a degree to be a nurse, and they often are pretty much doing junior doctor jobs. Calling it something else that recognises it’s academic demands, and also more inclusive to males wanting to work in the field…something like Healthcare Medic / Healthcare Practitioner/ Assistant Medic…. Or similar, you get the idea….

-YABU, it should be kept “nurse”, it’s traditional and has roots in “nursing an infant” ie breastfeeding (that reflects the caring nature)

-YANBU it’s old fashioned, insulting to people with degrees and esp males.

This is nonsense. The fact that your saying no nurse at all. Pffttt.

Nurses are updated on ward round. Nurses speak to doctors regularly it's probably the Dr who knows the least! They read the same notes the Nurses do... the Dr's have so many wards to cover there is no way that they have time to know about your relative the way you think!

The poster who stated she had to go over what the Dr said because of use of the medical terms..100% right here!! and your claiming you understood all this! Ha!

I wasn't around when Auxiliary nurses were a thing. But perhaps nurses want it all... because correct me if I am wrong but between a B4 which can take a team of patients and now give certain meds... and a B2/B2 can do things such as canulation and remove catheters. This is also the confusion with each role!

Places like New Zealand have nurses nursing patients and a lot less CSW. That's what UK is missing!

Nurses and doctors have distinct roles and should maintain their job titles. Your post implies that the title of doctor is somewhat superior to that of nurse, and that nurses should be renamed as such. In practice that isn't the case. I'm a doctor, and always get called a nurse by patients because I'm female, and it drives me mad... because I trained to be a doctor. My male nursing colleagues always get called a doctor by patients because they're male, and it drives them mad... because they trained to be a nurse.

If your so proud to be a nurse.. why don't you take it back to basics and do real nursing like the old days? Because a poster states there never used to be fancy titles... yet the job got done. The work load was no way more heavier than today. What is heavier is this this endless paper work which is very uncessary half the time.

You do know the nurses cannot manage without the HCA. Just like the Drs are needed during a crash!

I think we're arguing different points here. The term 'nurse' is too broad, you cannot compare a newly qualified band 5 to an ANP in knowledge/skill/role. Nor should you compare an F1 to a consultant. Using anecdotal evidence of ward nurses to make generalisations about the entire profession would be the same as using the example of a brand new F1 on their first rotation to describe the entire medical profession.

We all know there are good ones and bad ones out there of each, either due to skill or attitude. I know nurses I love dearly who have all the right attitude but frankly I wonder how they tie their own shoelaces. I have colleagues in my own team who
practice defensively and defer decisions to medics unnecessarily (it does my head in, we are a specialist team. If you want to hide behind another professional work somewhere else!). We all know which doctors we would want to look after us and in which scenarios depending on skill set.

OP

You seem to be saying that nursing is a lower form of doctor. They are totally different but complementary roles.

I worked in hospitals, my title changes from 'Cardiac technician' to 'Medical technical officer' to 'Clinical Physiologist'.

My job was the same, I did a lot more than record ECGs but on most hospital wards I was the 'ECG girl' and most patients thought I was a nurse.

Nursing has continued to expand since the days of Nightingale and Seacole. BTW did you know Florence Nightingale invented pie charts?

What a nurse does now depends a great deal on the career path they choose.

Don't forget nurses also work in the community, the army, prisons, psychiatric wards and paediatrics.

We should celebrate the number of areas they work in and the jobs nurses do.

I come from a family with a spattering of nurses, as a child I had one aunt and 2 uncles who were nurses, my brother became a nurse and married a nurse.

My aunt went to be a 'nursing cadet' at 14 or 15, my uncles did SRN and SRMN, my brother did RMN and his wife was a RGN who then did a degree.

They all trained to do the job as it was when they entered the profession and they all progressed through various training while working and gaining skills.

There can be some cross over between professions and acute medicine is often a team effort.

Nursing has changed in many ways, but it is still about caring for people and that is what most people understand by the word 'nurse'.

This thread is an accurate representation of the NHS!

Nurses offended the doctors dare think they’re above them, yet happy to put down the HCA’s who provide most of the nursing care these days.

the hierarchy is real!

@Badgirlriri absolutely hierarchy to the high heavens.

This thread is so sad, so much anger towards others.

Things are changing so much in the NHS and short staffing is probably the cause of nurses not being able to do much ‘caring’, and not because of what they’re job role is.

When I used to work as a ward nurse it was so disheartening because the work load far outweighed what the nurses could do in such small numbers. I remember once that I didn’t get my ‘breakfast break’ until 3pm because the ward was so, so busy. We would leave shift about 14 hours after arriving, feeling exhausted, but also feeling very sad that we hadn’t been able to care for the patients/families in the way we had wanted. It’s so demoralising and I imagine many, many nurses feel the same at the end of their shift.

Where I work the HCAs aren’t allowed to do anything with the children except wash them or feed them (Peadiatrics).

However, we also have Band 4 staff who are allocated their own patients (usually 3-4 infants) and apart from give out the medication, they can do everything for the patient that a nurse does. This will include admitting and discharging patients, observations, fluid balances, blood tests, arranging investigations, passing NG tubes and giving NG feeds, wound care, looking after patients on respiratory support (AirVo for example), dressings, tissue viability assessments etc. Anything you can think of really. As well as providing all the nursing care they also write in their patient’s notes and don’t even need them to be read or countersigned by a nurse. The role was designed to relieve the pressure off the nurses.

I imagine the Band 4s love having that level of responsibility but I also know that some of them are resentful that they do the exact same job on the ward as the nurses do (bar give the drugs) but get paid far less, have no registered and protected title and are seen as ‘lesser’ when it comes to the ward hierarchy.

We are so so thankful to them though as our ward just couldn’t function without them and they are amazing at their jobs.

That doesn’t make it right though.

I just wonder what your job is, talking of an attitude problem. 🙄

Im proud to be called a nurse and so were all the male nurses I’ve worked with over the years. We don’t need your makeover thank you.

@lameasahorse

I just wondered how you were making your assessment of excellent and good or shouldn't be in the job.

Youve said throughout that nurses are incapable of understanding complex medical issues but that you are capable of understanding them

So I presumed you had some kind of medical background to be able to.

Do you think doctors just speak to relatives? That there's no communication between consultants and nurses?

Even if you believe that care is entirely cons led you must realise that its the nurses who carry out the care and to do so they have to be able to understand the diagnosis and treatment plan?

How can they do that of they are incapable of understanding it?

That's right for peads but in a lot of the other departments you can take bloods and do ECGs at a band 2.

Also the registered band 4 can give certain meds I don't know about peads though... as its completely different and the nurse has no choice but to be more hands on.

I've stopped reading this because it's all a bit childish really.
I like the title nurse, everyone knows what it means. The role is ours to know and it doesn't matter what others think the role is.

The title nurse should be protected.

I like working as a team with drs and other health care professionals who all respect each other and are able to guide/ask for guidance as the situation and levels of experience in the situation require. If there was a dr in our team with so little respect for nurses as demonstrated here Matron and the consultant would be having a word.
Also nurses do ALS and run arrests, just saying.

That's right for peads but in a lot of the other departments you can take bloods and do ECGs at a band 2.

My friend works in an adult hospital, she used to be a HCA before she was seconded to do her Nurse training and I remember being really surprised when she told me what she was allowed to do - some of it which was beyond what I’m allowed to do as a qualified nurse.

We did trial our Band 2’s being allowed to do Obs at one time but it didn’t work out so their role returned to what it previously was.

We really miss our Band 2s when one isn’t on shift because as with most roles, you don’t realise how much they actually do until they’re not there.

As you said, because the nurses have to do all the hands-on care it does mean we get to spend more time with the children and families. This is obviously a good thing though because it’s easier to spot early deterioration, but also because it enable us to form good relationships with the parents.

Sometimes though, the parents don’t stay with the babies/infants which then make our jobs a little bit harder as then we are responsible for their basic needs, such as feeding them, changing nappies, changing clothes if needed, playing with them, cuddling then when they’re upset, settling them off to sleep etc, as well as meet their medical needs and those of our other patients.

Also nurses do ALS and run arrests, just saying.

Absolutely. If we have a child deteriorate in our High Dependency Unit where it becomes an emergency situation, the nurses are phenomenal. It’s a total 50/50 split between nurses and doctors as to how the situation is handled. I’m in awe of how knowledgable and skilled the nurses are in keeping so calm in those situations and they certainly don’t play second fiddle to the doctors.

When children who have been put on a ventilator and need taking to an ITU in another hospital it is a team of very skilled, highly trained, specialist nurses who come and collect the patient and do the transfer.

I’m incredibly proud of how the nursing role is evolving and although doctors on the whole will be more clinically knowledgable than us that doesn’t mean they’re always the best person to meet the child’s needs in specific situations and thankfully they are humble enough to know that.

That’s what makes a team run so efficiently, finding the right person to meet the child’s identified needs and that is sometimes a nurse, not a doctor.

There are no doctor Egos in the Team I work within. We respect their knowledge and skills and they respect ours. We call on them when we need their help and they call on us when they need our help.

Its Team Work and it certainly isn’t us versus them.

In our unit band 3’s have their own infants (usually 4 per shift) and will do all of the above you’ve mentioned, except they can’t check drugs or look after infants on any respiratory support other than low flow.

Healthcare medic lol. Sounds like one of those fancy made up bullshit job titles so popular nowadays.

@Perplexed0522 HCA do a hell of a lot. Working with adults it's crucial you are capable to do obs in a hospital setting..I dont know how some nurses complain over protection of a title yet there's no mention of how much responsibility are given by the nurse! Even obs on patients having blood transfusions and I have been asked to do neuro obs also on acutely unwell patients. There's a clear unbalanced here.

I’m not saying they aren’t capable of it, I was just surprised that they are allowed to do so much, but obviously that’s because my experience is only working with HCAs in Paediatric environments.

Can I ask how it works in turns of responsibility?

For example, when you do your Obs (normal or neuro) are you expected to then go and show them to a nurse, or are you allowed to just plot them on the graph and make your own decisions based on any abnormal results?

And do you have training to do these things or are you just taught by the nurses on the ward?

I only ask because when our HCA’s used to do the Obs they had to show them to a nurse and only a nurse could plot them on the charts.

Regards to our Band 4’s, they had to have 3 months of solely classroom based training before they were allowed to have patients.

And like I said, with regards to where the responsibility lies, who is responsible for any mistakes that are made?

For example if one of our Band 4’s makes an error of some kind which causes some level of harm to the child, the nurse is ultimately responsible and takes on the repercussions because they are the trained and registered professionals who should be overseeing the Band 4 staff.

I only ask because I’m genuinely interested in how other units work, especially the differences between adult care and Paediatrics.

@Perplexed0522
I had a lovely HCA post op a couple of years who absolutely did take, and write on my chart, my obs. She did not go off to get a nurse to do it.

Gosh how has this descended into such a horrid thread where nurses and doctors disparage each other? Most terms of doctors and nurses work well together, there is normally mutual appreciation and reliance. Medicine and nursing are very different disciplines but there has been overlap, more so in recent years as nurses have taken on a lot more of the jobs traditionally done by junior doctors. Some nurses are very advanced in practice although that doesn’t always mean doing medic jobs!!!

if we were redesigning nursing now we would probably call it something different for all sorts of reasons. I would definitely move away from titles like Sister and Matron and wish we could abolish those. But I can’t think of any good reason to move nurse from our titles.

Do you feel you had any care from a nurse at all? Or was it mainly from the HCAs?

Finding this thread hilarious. It seems that the less someone knows about a subject, the more confident that they are that they’re correct

Oh and the few arguing that nurses can’t or won’t give complex updates on treatment, progress, prognosis have obviously never met a clinical nurse specialist. In ‘my day’ on the wards we did give all of that information, so what has changed? I think this reflects a couple of things. Ward nurses are so run ragged nowadays delivering complex care / tasks they don’t have enough time to devote to understanding patient pathways or practice delivering difficult news. The other is wards are mostly staffed by the most junior nurses, the hospitals choose to pay ward nurses the most junior salaries and the seniors have so many other options to move onto. Ward work is physically hard and the shifts are a killer so people tend to move away from ward work as soon as they can.