Only lower class girls become nurses

[upsidelow]

I am a nurse, definitely from a working class background for which I am proud. I had it said to me that it's the poor or thick girls that become nurses. To be fair the person who said it did not know that I am a nurse but still...Is that what people think? That you don't need to be clever to be a nurse! I studied for three years, I also have post graduate qualifications too. My job is demanding and requires a lot of time and attention. I am not thick! Apparently bright girls being teachers...

This is true in my country, but we've had an egalitarian system so women were equally as likely to be doctors as men. (So doctors wouldn't marry nurses, they marry each other.)

Anyone who makes this claim has no idea of what the modern nursing role actually involves. So I wouldn’t take their opinion too seriously.

I would like to see someone that isn’t degree educated to a high standard come and take care of someone who’s difficult to ventilate, on multiple vasopressors, CVVH, and is septic as hell. You need a complex understanding of A&P and medicine to nurse these patients and that only comes with education.

SENs have been reinvented as Nursing Associates.

I've been in mental health nursing for more years than I care to remember. I'm not thick (I hope) though I did qualify under the traditional model so don't have a degree. My dad was a builder though so I suppose I could come from a "lower class " background.

Glad and yes. Surgeons are consultants. No they don’t become doctors or surgeons (doctors) because nursing is their choice….
it’s not a fall back career.
the classist drivel your spouting seems to have completely evaded your consciousness. Please define fsm…

Academic schools? (sausage factories) something else? All schools sit the same exams and a gcse, A1, A2. Has the same value country wide irrespective of where it studied-examined and awarded.

Of course it's nonsense and a very odd thing for someone to say.
A nurse is a professional and had to pass a degree level course.
The person who said it sounds very ignorant though

Both my DM and DMIL were nurses, both qualified in the 1950s, as SRNs. They were just middle class. DMIL, nowadays, would have become a doctor instead I think. DM probably not, because she would have wanted to work in the food industry. Both clever enough to get degrees in today's world but that wasn't what happened then.

Equally, both DF and DFiL were pilots. In the 1950s, you learned the skill, and worked. My grandfather left school at 14, without school certificate, and ended up Chief Standards Engineer, a level just below the Board, with BAe building Concorde. That would simply never be a promotional career path now without the degrees.

In my experience, the only kids I know who have gone into nursing have done so because their mum was a nurse and their nan was a nurse etc.

Back in the day you didn't need a degree to do nursing and it did tend to be something "uneducated" (and I mean that as being a lack of opportunity rather than a lack of capability) people (mainly women) did. Until the late 80s it was a poorly paid job, which meant that there wasn't much opportunity for social mobility. So, the children of nurses tended to come from a "working class'" household.

Between 1988 and 2009, a college taught nursing diploma was needed but the requirement for a university degree didn't come in until 2009.

A lot of people will still assume it is a "working class" job because of its history. Careers advisors seem to see it as a fall back option for people who can't get in to other courses. The universities near me have entrance requirements of BCC at Higher (BC at A level) With those grades, options at University are limited so I guess that's why they see it that way.

Anyone who can get through a nursing degree is definitely not stupid. It's a much different job than it used to be.

I think years ago it was a posh girls job, Florence Nightingale wasn't exactly working class.

That was before the advent of the NHS, where healthcare was private and there weren't very many nurses.

I think whoever said it to you OP is showing their age! Nursing these days is very demanding I know a nurse that works in cardiology and one that does a huge amount of research as part of her role. Things have moved on considerably since they were young, 50 years ago.

I left school in 1974, after A levels. About a third of my class went to do nursing/physio/medic-related jobs. I don't remember anyone going to medical school but I met plenty of medics at university, and quite frankly, they really weren't any cleverer than the lawyers or physicists or the economists. When and why did we end up mythologising the medical profession?

My family members say it’s not intrinsically hard but that there is a lot of it and you must know everything. I’m not mythologising them. I just don’t think nursing is a lesser career.

One of my kids is a nurse. Grammar school kept saying they should be doing medicine. Early 30s deputy director of hospital and earning more than friends who did medicine. Very good at their job and has loved it from day one.

I decided doctors are always that bright when a young doctor was going through my history before surgery. She asked if anyone in the family had a certain condition. Yes I said, my paternal grandmother. She looked exasperated as she explained grandmothers are female so can't be paternal. When I explained you have 2 of them your mother's mother your maternal grandmother and your fathers your paternal grandmother. She slammed my notes shut, didn't speak and marched off.

Having a degree does not mean a person is necessarily more intelligent than another person. It just means they know their stuff on a particular topic.

Yes, with say theoretical physics there are some very difficult concepts to get your head around, but medicine is mainly fact based (even though there are a lot of facts!).

I honk the old nightingale nursing qualification, though not a degree, was extremely rigorous. It was on-the-job training, but with very high standards to qualify. I remember my mother (who trained this way) complaining that some nursing graduate might be good at passing exams, but are no good at many of the varied day to day aspects of nursing. She had to train them on the job because their qualification hadn’t prepared them well enough.

*think.

Nursing was traditionally a job for well to do young ladies. Just watch Call the Midwife or look into the backgrounds of Edith Cavell or Florence Nightingale.

Only because medicine wasn’t an option for females in Florence Nightingales time.

women dr’s are relatively recent- the first one qualified in the late 1800’s, but wasn’t allowed to practice. Wasn’t until after ww2 in the 50’s when women dr’s were more accepted.

IMO that’s actually quite funny. She was evidently thoroughly pissed off that a mere ‘ordinary person’ had shown up a gap in her common-or-garden general knowledge.

Yes she was definitely angry, maybe a bit embarrassed.

I’m a nurse, when I started my training in 1999 the course was DipHE the degree hadn’t been introduced yet, we were the first intake in my university to change to the degree - the course was the same academically until the last year you chose 2 extra modules and did a research paper to pass the degree. I’m dyslexic so went to college for a year to gain qualifications to get in, my maths was crap so I got a rubbish grade at school. However with some confidence and a good tutor at college I passed and went on to study paediatric nursing, the drug calculations make sense when you’re doing them and I love the job. I was told at school I’d never qualify.

I’ve been nursing now for 20+ years. Never thought of it as lower/middle class etc it’s hard work, lots of thinking on your feet. Lots of people have opinions about what nursing is but unless you’re on the job in that shift doing it you just don’t know. I left wards as I’d done that for 18 years and felt under valued and under paid for the job I did, and now work in the community. Better work:life balance and more autonomy, I work alone in clinics. Genuinely love my job.