I’ve had fun this week posting Romance Novel bookcovers depicting nurses on my Facebook page. Young ladies in starched white uniforms with cinched waists emphasizing other endowments. All this because in the United States it is National Nurse’s Week, which culminates on May 12. May 12 happens to be International Nurses Day. May 12 was chosen as the day for International Nurse’s Day because it is also the birthday of Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale is considered the pioneer of what we think of as contemporary nursing emphasizing hygiene and sanitation. Florence Nightingale’s work established nursing as a distinct discipline requiring education. Florence Nightingale was born 190 years ago today, May 12, 1820 in the City of Florence within modern day Italy (hence her name Florence). Florence Nightingale used what we refer to today as “evidence-based-practice” in her work in hospitals in what we now know as Istanbul during the Crimean War; greatly reducing death-rates.
This year - 2010 marks the centennial anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s death in August 1910. The Episcopal Church notes here life near her death date of August 13. Words about Florence Nightingale on the Episcopal Calendar can be found here.
An 1856 lithograph of the Selimiye barracks as a hospital during the Crimean War.
I say all this as a contrast to the images that are part of the collective cultural unconscious within the United States of what nursing is and who nurses are. I know this first-hand. I am a nurse. First and foremost, I am a male in a female dominated profession. Sexism in our country – nurses continue to be seen by some as helpers, handmaids. Some patients equate us with waitresses. Some believe women go into nursing to find physician spouses. I’ve dealt with a few male physicians who swoon when they are able to converse with young female nurses (who happen also to be very adept clinicians); but the same physicians bristle in having to deal with me, a male nurse.
I am here to tell you first-hand that nurses are some of the strongest, toughest, most courageous people I know. I work the PM shift. After all the visitors are gone and we are dealing with abusive patients, patients withdrawing from alcohol and drugs, patients who are just plain grumpy from being chronically sick and nurses are there to receive that information. We are there dealing with the scores of elderly with dementia – I have chased more than one of your loved-ones late in the evening who have taken off their gown, removed their own heart monitor and IV access and are walking naked down the hall to who knows where.
Since being becoming a Registered Nurse, I once greeted a patient family, introducing myself to the patient and patient family in the room. A quizzical child noting my gender asked his mother, “why is that guy a nurse?” Right in front of me the mother’s answer was, “because he couldn’t get into medical school.” as if I weren’t even there. While I corrected them telling them I never wanted to be a physician (actually I wanted to be a physician for a couple weeks in the fifth grade – what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a pharmacist). – the family wasn’t buying it. I was their waitress for the evening.
I am here to remind one and all that nurses historically have been and very much are educated professionals as the compassionate caring persons they are. Nurses are able scientists using data and observation to analyze injury and disease. Nurses are the social workers when the LCSWs have gone home. We counsel the crazed and truly afraid.
I also maintain that hospital administrators believe we are caring for the smiling active alert and oriented seniors on the brochures and annual reports about the hospital. They don’t want to know about patients who throw bedpans at workers.
Being a bedside hospital nurse is incredibly difficult work (I was warned by more than one before embarking on this journey). Being a bedside hospital nurse is emotionally taxing. At the same time being a bedside hospital nurse is incredibly rewarding and is a far cry from being a bean-counting-mugwump in a beige cubicle. I love the people who work with me shoulder-to-shoulder caring for patients and solving problem. A favorite nursing professor of mine suggested to us that going into the nursing profession will cause great and sometimes uncomfortable spiritual growth. She was right.
So here’s to International Nurse’s Day and our Lady of the Lamp.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
This year - 2010 marks the centennial anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s death in August 1910. The Episcopal Church notes here life near her death date of August 13. Words about Florence Nightingale on the Episcopal Calendar can be found here.
An 1856 lithograph of the Selimiye barracks as a hospital during the Crimean War.I say all this as a contrast to the images that are part of the collective cultural unconscious within the United States of what nursing is and who nurses are. I know this first-hand. I am a nurse. First and foremost, I am a male in a female dominated profession. Sexism in our country – nurses continue to be seen by some as helpers, handmaids. Some patients equate us with waitresses. Some believe women go into nursing to find physician spouses. I’ve dealt with a few male physicians who swoon when they are able to converse with young female nurses (who happen also to be very adept clinicians); but the same physicians bristle in having to deal with me, a male nurse.
I am here to tell you first-hand that nurses are some of the strongest, toughest, most courageous people I know. I work the PM shift. After all the visitors are gone and we are dealing with abusive patients, patients withdrawing from alcohol and drugs, patients who are just plain grumpy from being chronically sick and nurses are there to receive that information. We are there dealing with the scores of elderly with dementia – I have chased more than one of your loved-ones late in the evening who have taken off their gown, removed their own heart monitor and IV access and are walking naked down the hall to who knows where.
Since being becoming a Registered Nurse, I once greeted a patient family, introducing myself to the patient and patient family in the room. A quizzical child noting my gender asked his mother, “why is that guy a nurse?” Right in front of me the mother’s answer was, “because he couldn’t get into medical school.” as if I weren’t even there. While I corrected them telling them I never wanted to be a physician (actually I wanted to be a physician for a couple weeks in the fifth grade – what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a pharmacist). – the family wasn’t buying it. I was their waitress for the evening.
I am here to remind one and all that nurses historically have been and very much are educated professionals as the compassionate caring persons they are. Nurses are able scientists using data and observation to analyze injury and disease. Nurses are the social workers when the LCSWs have gone home. We counsel the crazed and truly afraid.
I also maintain that hospital administrators believe we are caring for the smiling active alert and oriented seniors on the brochures and annual reports about the hospital. They don’t want to know about patients who throw bedpans at workers.
Being a bedside hospital nurse is incredibly difficult work (I was warned by more than one before embarking on this journey). Being a bedside hospital nurse is emotionally taxing. At the same time being a bedside hospital nurse is incredibly rewarding and is a far cry from being a bean-counting-mugwump in a beige cubicle. I love the people who work with me shoulder-to-shoulder caring for patients and solving problem. A favorite nursing professor of mine suggested to us that going into the nursing profession will cause great and sometimes uncomfortable spiritual growth. She was right.
So here’s to International Nurse’s Day and our Lady of the Lamp.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
