September 15, 2015

#‎NursesShareYourStethoscopes‬

I'm not one for standing on a soap box, but in light of comments made on The View about Miss Colorado's recent monologue I couldn't help myself.

As a nursing student one professor told us that while medicine treats the disease, nursing treats the human reaction to the disease.


I, like so many other colleagues, have had to defend myself and explain I am more than 'just a nurse' and while I was smart enough to cut it in medical school it was not my calling. We do more than clean up poop and give bed baths; there is nothing sexy about the scrubs we wear or being covered in someone else's bodily fluids. Day in and day out, nurses (and PCT's) monitor you or your loved ones for minor changes in vital signs and mental status. We double and triple check to make sure your orders and medications are correct. We chart, we analyze your lab results and we spend MUCH more time with you than the doctors (nothing against many of the hard working, compassionate doctors I have met over the last two years, that is just how it goes).

Over the last few years I have experienced the joy of parents meeting their child for the first time, reviewed diagnoses and medications with patients until they fully understand their discharge instructions and held the hands of family members as a loved one took their last breaths.


So tomorrow I will put on my scrubs, don my 'doctor's stethoscope' and head to work with nearly 4 million other registered nurses. The job is truly a calling and I for one could not be prouder to be part of the most honorable profession in U.S.

1 comment: