The Nurse Will See You Now

Nurses and doctors are inseparable part of medicine. Being a physician i think nurses job is far more challenging and stressful then physicians. it requires lot of patience and responsibility, while carrying out orders. I can safely say doctors value the nurses more so then Nurses actually realize. A good and professional nurse can make a doctor's job much easy and vice versa.
I noticed in our hospital Nurses day, social worker's day are celebrated with much fan fair and they are given rightfully deserved respect and appreciation. on the contrary doctor's day goes unnoticed even by doctor's.

Thank you so much for recognizing the work of nusres, whose efforts so often go unnoticed (sometimes even by their patients). I am a nurse and have also been a patient, and as a patienti I have received both excellent nusring care and inadequate nursing care. When one has an excellent nuse it is as if an angel has been sent to care for you, and it makes all the difference. Thanks for supporting us with this very kind article.

Thank you for offerign your support to nurses, whose efforts often go unrecognized and yet can make all the difference. I have received both excellent nursing care and inadequate care, and when one has a truly excellent nusre it is as if an angel has been sent to help. For all that nurses do, and all the hardships they might endure along the way in order to care for us, I applaud you all.

As an operating room nurse, I have been subject to sexual harassment by surgeons without any recourse, as well as the verbal "whipping post". I have worked with surgeons who have argued incorrect counts, only to reexplore a surgical wound and retrieve missing sponges. I have also worked with nurses who declare a count to be correct, only for a physician to return to surgery and retrieve surgical objects. When surgeons are on call and have patients to take to surgery on holidays and special occasions, I am often right there with them. If it's not me, then it's one of my colleagues. Surgeons don't EVER do surgery alone, and the team members there are nurses, techs, assistants, etc. I have worked on floors at 3am when trying to contact physicians and residents about critical condition changes, only to be ignored or yelled at for awakening them. Later, when it's discovered the patient's condition has in fact worsened, it is the nurse who is blamed for not being persistent enough about notifying the changes in condition. (On the flip side, I have worked with physicians and residents who are right there when that phone call is made and have stayed at bedside all night long when a patient's condition has turned downward.)

As with the patients who want a pill to correct the outcomes of poor lifestyle choices because they don't wish to be accountable for their decisions, the same holds true for anyone in any profession--ACCOUNTABILITY. Doctors and nurses make mistakes, and there are several reasons why this happens. Mistakes are never intended, but they do occur, and the outcomes can be grave. Passing blame from one to another without ever accepting responsibility is merely a symptom of a larger problem; one which isn't exclusive to doctors or nurses, but inclusive of a broader mentality without regard to one's profession.

Mr Adler
I am a male nurse with over 20 years of nursing experience. I bring many skills to my work environment. I have seen large changes in Health Care in how it is delivered and paid for. The clearest change that still needs to take place is for all health care professionals to work as a team with the patient best outcome in mind. Any consumer needs to ask what kind of relationship their practitioner has with others in their profession. I would say if your health care provider seems to be standing alone in his or her practice go find another practitioner. This is wether it is a nurse or a doctor. Todays health care is much to complicated for one person to try and control its outcomes.

Nurses are
nurses because that is the choice they made, the same goes for
doctors. We are two different entities and should be treated as such.
The public need to learn and understand the differences between what
nurses do and what doctors do. We both serve the human race,doctors
deal with specific needs, nurses see the overall person. I thank God
that we have both nurses and doctors and that we can work together,
after all I don't want to be a doctor!

Doctor Bob you need to relax, first off.
This was a short piece highlighting the absurdity of popular media portrayals of hospital/ER life when it comes to dramatic medical crises moments where TV docs are seemingly present 24/7 to do everything(initiating codes, meds, lines and fluids, patient and family education, discharge teaching, etc..) and how that impossibility just doesn't square with real life and how, just perhaps, this accepted public invisibility and blatant misperception of what exactly acute care nurses do might be a disservice to us all. When the focus is solely on the 'caring' aspects, which of course all in the health professions do, we deny the dangerous complexity of inpatient care today and the pace, acuity and technology that demands an educated nursing professional at the bedside for the 95% of the time that a busy MD understandably won't be present. When the 'real life' TV scenarios occur(and they not infrequently do) where a patient crashes or experiences any other now familiar plotpoint, why perpetuate the myth that instead of initiating life saving rescue or better still potentially preventing or lessening the crisis by possessing an understanding of disease process, pharmacology and technology, that nurses generally rely on earnestly angelic brow wiping, adopting an intent bedpan focus or offering emotional comfort while awaiting the '.real' pros to capably save the day. Just like we see on TV, right? (Yes, yes, until the med staff arrives which you know can vary enormously by facility,coverage and staffing).The author pointed out one striking example of a nurse(granted a former RN) who performed a life saving intervention of the kind we generally assume from repeated fictional incarnations would be the heroic doctor's critical role to play. Let's face it, in real life we know that's just not always so. This doesn't diminish your job and it's unfortunate that you choose to infer that it does. There is no us vs. them here. The tired stereotyping and negative portrayal perpetuated by media, and apparently accepted by even some of our colleagues here, of what nurses today need to know and actually do everyday needs more attention paid and an even greater dose of reality if we hope to attract and, perhaps even more importantly, retain the skilled professionals so desperately needed today, Truly, though, you can't have it both ways. Selfless, trustworthy sponge losing incompetents or dependable, knowledgable professionals who are valued for their own hard earned education and experience? Don't begrudge them the compensation and working environment they deserve. You can keep the keychain, I promise. Unfortunate the minimal attention sent you seeking an opponent where it might have just been time appropriate to allow some credit where it is so desperately, rightfully due.

The spin of "the nurse will see you now" is disturbing- the nurse will see you in under 15 minutes (because HMOs and insurance won't pay you after that), and make sure your health is on the right track (it takes time to assess a patient's whole health (high blood pressure, heart disease, STDs, smoking cessation, ETOH cessation, diet plans, diabetes) like Doctors are asked to do for 30-40 patients in general medicine clinic DAILY. And the Payors won't reimburse you if you don't perform/bill correctly.

Welcome to the glamorous profession of the doctor. The media is killing me and the government is meddling in stuff in all the wrong ways.

And about the "greed" salary- what other professional's decisions holds people's lives in their hand on a daily basis? Who takes the liability? The physician. When nurses make mistakes... the physician goes down legally as well no matter what. I am going to say, I damn well deserve the salary I make because I work every day trying to improve people's health, morbidity, and mortality. They are people I don't know and otherwise have no vested interest in saving were I in a different profession, where whether they pay me for the care they receive CANNOT matter, because I won't refuse to treat them if they show up. I am in a profession where I can't afford to make mistakes (although occasionally it does happen), because if it happens it's life or death. We take it to heart. We can't ever blame the patient for some of their choices that maybe have led them down a path of illness - Morbid Obesity, Lung diseases from lifetime smoking, Heart disease from one too many burgers, Liver failure from Alcohol abuse, Strokes from uncontrolled high blood pressure, Kidney failure/Blindness from uncontrolled diabetes. I have spent so much time and effort educating patients on these issues only to have them come back and say, "I tried to change, but I couldn't." "Can't you prescribe me a pill for that?" Nurses don't have that obligation and pressure to change a patient's whole lifestyle.
That might be why our groups can't support OBAMA. He is willing to dilute the quality of patient care for the sake of money. MY SOLUTION TO THE HEALTHCARE CRISIS MR PRESIDENT: Education!!!! The general public doesn't need insurance, they need someone to educate them EARLY in life, about the choices that land them in the hospital in the first place. Because let's face- insurance isn't going to cover when a twenty year old drunk driver gets in an accident, is rushed to hospital, and lands in the ICU for several weeks, then rehab for months, then incurs a bill that is over a million dollars. Insurance coverage won't save the system that kind of money. Or when we are asked "DO EVERYTHING FOR MY DYING 88 YO OLD MOTHER who has stroked out half of her brain function" and again incur hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care for someone who may not end up with the quality of life they wanted in the first place. Or even.... dare I say it- do everything for the probable brain-dead patients whose family can't let go? God, that's when we are doing harm! That's where the healthcare system is going bankrupt, my friends, not because the doctors are overpaid. Because I guarantee you, out of that billions of dollars of medical care the patients like those are getting- the government reimbursement is less than 15%. An uninsured patient- NO REIMBURSEMENT AT ALL. So, the patients that receive the "most" care, are receiving it for free anyway. Insurance only does a little better than the government anyway.

Nurse's should receive more appreciation for their hourly care of the patients. However, physicians are now being seen as greedy, glory-seekers that stomp on all of the "help". Need to back up on that opinion.

Doctors education and training takes years and a lot of loans. Think about the sacrifice, when at age 22, instead of being in a peer group that is going off into the "real world" finding jobs, starting to "find yourself", then getting started on family life near the end of your twenties, you decide you will go to 4 years of grueling, fast-paced medical school (average loans being $100,000 and up), 3-7 years of residency (sleep deprivation and learning fast what's the best for the patient)... (puts us at age 29 and up), and THEN starting in the real world, finding your first job or even trying to start up your own practice. That's pretty much a extra decade of life, sacrificing, day in and day out, in hopes of doing the right things for patients- who although we physically cannot be there at their bedside 24 hrs a day like a nurse does- we think about our decisions and make sure we "first do no harm". Alot of patients are so grateful to their nurses, because they are the picture of caring and administering meds, etc. Their ratio is from 1:2 (in the ICU setting) to 1:7-10? up on the floor. Guess what our ratio is as an attending physiciain- 1:20 (in the ICU setting) and 1:45-55 up on the floor. We certainly depend on nurses to carry out the majority of the "medical management" we prescribe, and know they provide emotional/educational needs of the patients because we physically cannot be there.

There is a lot of things we trust the nurses to do. Sometimes it hurts when that trust is misplaced- for example, in surgery, we trust the nurses have counted all the instruments/sponges and tell the physician at the end "counts are correct"... but then things are left in patients? Who takes the blame- the surgeon! Ok, and we trust that our orders for medications have been given, and are surprised when we see it hasn't because of whatever excuse is convenient- "we were taking care of another patient", "I was off the floor", "patient refused", "patient was off the floor smoking", etc., and it goes on. BUT if the patient doesn't get their life-saving medication/test/study, who is to blame?? The physician. Because if we ever say anything bad about nurses, they will likely strike and instead of taking time to take care of the patient, they will spend a great deal of time trying to get the physician fired. We are walking on eggshells whenever a nurse makes a mistake, and trying hard to backpedal/reverse if it's a serious one, and tolerate incompentency if it's a minor one.

Nurse's should receive more appreciation for their hourly care of the patients. However, physicians are now being seen as greedy, glory-seekers that stomp on all of the "help". Need to back up on that opinion.

I am glad that nurses are getting some media credit, but I agree with previous comments about doctors and nurses having different roles as part of a health care team. In college I was diagnosed with cancer. I am forever grateful for the care I recieved in the hospital from the very caring nursing staff, but without the doctor, I would still have cancer( if I was still here at all). As a new medicine intern, I am thankful for the kind and helpful nurses that provide the suggestions, advice, and information I need to do my job. When interviewing for medical school I never used the "I want to help people" line. My personal experience would have led to nursing if that was my goal, but I love what I do as a physician. I don't "breeze in and out" because I have a golf game to get to. When I am 20 hours into my 30 hour call, my pager is going off every 85 seconds because I am cross covering 40 patients, I can't be compared to those whose ratio is closer to 1:4. It's not because I care any less.

I dont understand the point of the article. Doctors have thier job which is medical decision making(which antibiotic, imaging studies,admission/ discharge. following progress checking labs interpreting said results and nurses have thier own jobs which is nursing care.. making sure the patient is comfortable that sort of thing. They stay with the patient for their shift.. doctors dont breeze in and out. They make their rounds which can include a high census and see consults and are in the office. The article makes it look like nurses do all the work and doctors dont do any. WTF? To reiterate, doctors have their jobs and nurses have thiers. Very biased article. No wonder its in news week. Thats why i dont bother ever subscribing to newsweek. The author should be ashamed of himself.

This is a timely article which inspires me to write down something I have observed during the past decade. I like to point out in two incidents, the suggestions from experienced nurse could save the life of patients seeing family physician. The first case involves a male , age near 70, who complained several times to his physician that he felt discomfort under his shoulder when he tried to raise his arm. The physician said , for several years, that the problem is arthritis due to old age. At one point, a nurse made the suggestion that an X ray be taken on his troubled shoulder. The X ray shown the patient has suffered advanced lung cancer. The other incident also involved a senior male about similar age. He has long history of moderate high blood pressure and has been seeing his physician for years to get prescriptions. His condition was later worsened that he felt chest tightness during exercise or running, but his physician never try to refer him to specialist, until a nurse who has a college degree and had a lot of hospital clinical experience, made the suggestion that the patient go to hospital to take stress test. The test revealed that the patient's heart artery was severely blocked and required a bypass surgery to cure the problem.

I have worked in the health care for 20 years. The general public does not get what a nurse does, until they need one.
I congratulate you in realizing that the doctors had the skills to help your son but they could not have succeeded without the nurse. It is true that healthcare often forgets how valuable the nurse is because the doctors get all the credit. The truth is that nurse focus on the patient as a whole prior to, during and following surgury, they are the ones that educate, sympathize, assess and treat the patient 24 hours a day seven days a week while hospitalized. They are truely one of the most trusted professions today. Patient's remember that nurse that stood by them through thick and thin at the bedside. They save lives each and every day.

Mr. Adler: You are a professional journalist. So am I. Do you also operate the presses that turn your copy into print on page? Probably not. But we would agree that both journalists and pressmen are vital to the process of producing an award-winning magazine. Yet they are different jobs, using different skills, and requiring different training.
So it is with doctors and nurses. You say that your son required 40 "significant surgeries." Can you name a nurse that you requested to perform any one of those surgeries?
The task of caring for your son clearly calls for professionals offering specific skills and training. All vital and necessary, but inherently different jobs. The fact that your son (and you) have been cared for by well-trained nurses and doctors does not diminish the role of one over the other. Nor are they ever held to the same level of expectation.
Your son has had more than his share of challenges, it seems, and I'm sorry. But when you come to Newsweek you do your job, and the pressmen do theirs. I don't think you could take their place, or they yours. Different jobs, different skills, different training. The science and art that is medicine depends on the best efforts of all, as does journalism (or any profession, for that matter).
I admire your work, Mr, Adler, but this was not your best.

Jerry, you are a professional journalist. So am I. Do you know how to run the printing presses that turn your copy into media, the actual print on pages? Probably not. Nor do I. Do you think the folks who run the presses would be able to research a topic the way you can? Again, probably not. It's a different job with different training. We're both important to the process but our training and our skills are different.
So it is with nurses and doctors. You say your son had 40 "significant surgeries". Can you name a nurse that you asked to perform any one of those surgeries? Different job, different skills, different training.
It's admirable that, through your experiences with your son, you've come to value the skills of the nurses who've cared for him (and for you). And timely, too, since Nurse's Appreciation Day is just around the corner. But I doubt if you would give your job up to that great pressman who never smudges the ink on my Newsweelk magazine. I don't think he could do what you do, nor could you do what he does. Different skills, different job, different training.
(You are much better than this piece. Usually.)

Mr. Adler:
Thank you for acknowledging that nurses played a critical role in your son's outcome. We are at the bedside 24/7 and if a doctor happens to be there at 3 am it is most often because a nurse had let him/ her know that he/she needed to be there.
Susan Givens Bell, MS, MABMH, RNC-NIC