Cowgirl Nurses with Great Expectations
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com
Traditionally, nurses are beyond criticism. They are `angels' and they have always received a `good press'. But nurses have changed. And they have changed a good deal. The result is that today's nurses are nothing like their predecessors. If they are to be forced back into doing what they should be doing then they need to be criticised - and their shortcomings need to be identified.
The big problem is that today's nurses are too self-important to carry out any of the traditional tasks entrusted to nurses. Modern nurses don't like to bother much with caring, touching, feeding or comforting. They regard themselves as above collecting bedpans or plumping up pillows. Nurses are now too self-important to feed patients or to lift them and too protective of their past to let anyone else do these things either. It is a tragedy that as nurses have become too important to nurse, no other group has been allowed to take on the most essential caring tasks. Auxiliaries, for example, are not allowed to do anything with to or for patients and the result is that there is no one on the average hospital ward to wash, feed or care for patients.
In the bad old days nurses would help their patients in a thousand tiny ways. They would make sure that their female patients wore clean nighties and had their hair brushed before visiting time. They don't do these things any more. And it isn't that they have other, more important things to do. Go into any hospital these days and you will see half a dozen nurses sitting around the nurses’ station chatting and eating chocolates. (It's no wonder they're all so fat. You'd think nurses would be more concerned with their health. If they got up and moved about a bit occasionally they would burn up some of the calories.)
Nurses should bandage wounds, make beds, empty bedpans and soothe sweaty brows. They should take temperatures and record pulse rates and give out prescribed medicines. That's what they are there for and it's what they are best at. It is also what patients need from them. These are important tasks. Sadly, most nurses consider themselves far too grand for such work. Nurses have become lazy.