1-1banner
 
medpundit
 

 
Commentary on medical news by a practicing physician.
 

 
Google
  • Epocrates MedSearch Drug Lookup




  • MASTER BLOGS





    "When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov




    ''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.''
    -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.




    "Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel



    email: medpundit-at-ameritech.net

    or if that doesn't work try:

    medpundit-at-en.com



    Medpundit RSS


    Quirky Museums and Fun Stuff


    Who is medpundit?


    Tech Central Station Columns



    Book Reviews:
    Read the Review

    Read the Review

    Read the Review

    More Reviews

    Second Hand Book Reviews

    Review


    Medical Blogs

    rangelMD

    DB's Medical Rants

    Family Medicine Notes

    Grunt Doc

    richard[WINTERS]

    code:theWebSocket

    Psychscape

    Code Blog: Tales of a Nurse

    Feet First

    Tales of Hoffman

    The Eyes Have It

    medmusings

    SOAP Notes

    Obels

    Cut-to -Cure

    Black Triangle

    CodeBlueBlog

    Medlogs

    Kevin, M.D

    The Lingual Nerve

    Galen's Log

    EchoJournal

    Shrinkette

    Doctor Mental

    Blogborygmi

    JournalClub

    Finestkind Clinic and Fish Market

    The Examining Room of Dr. Charles

    Chronicles of a Medical Mad House

    .PARALLEL UNIVERSES.

    SoundPractice

    Medgadget
    Health Facts and Fears

    Health Policy Blogs

    The Health Care Blog

    HealthLawProf Blog

    Facts & Fears

    Personal Favorites

    The Glittering Eye

    Day by Day

    BioEdge

    The Business Word Inc.

    Point of Law

    In the Pipeline

    Cronaca

    Tim Blair

    Jane Galt

    The Truth Laid Bear

    Jim Miller

    No Watermelons Allowed

    Winds of Change

    Science Blog

    A Chequer-Board of Night and Days

    Arts & Letters Daily

    Tech Central Station

    Blogcritics

    Overlawyered.com

    Quackwatch

    Junkscience

    The Skeptic's Dictionary



    Recommended Reading

    The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams


    Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth Fenn


    Intoxicated by My Illness by Anatole Broyard


    Raising the Dead by Richard Selzer


    Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy


    The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks


    The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo


    A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich




    MEDICAL LINKS

    familydoctor.org

    American Academy of Pediatrics

    General Health Info

    Travel Advice from the CDC

    NIH Medical Library Info

     



    button

    Monday, June 21, 2004

    Nursing Education: A reader sends these observations on why registered nurses are no longer the masters of the bedside they once were:

    Old fashioned nurses were working class girls who went to 3 years schools. They studied one year, then worked for two years on the wards part time while studying. Then they got an RN degree. By the end of three years, they could bedside nurse.

    Then the ANA, about the time women's lib started, decided nurses should be "professionals" and would be better nurses with a B.S. --they would study Literature and be more refined and well rounded. But the BS degree was too expensive for working class girls like myself (I went to Medical school under a Great Society scholarship which was one of the few scholarship programs that did not discriminate according to sex, but without a scholarship could never have afforded college--and the local nursing BS colleges gave few scholarships back then). As a result, working class girls ended up either nurses aides or with a two year associate degree. The two year nurses were useless in bedside nursing until they worked a year or two.

    So, nurses, now "professionals", usually "supervised" nurses aides rather than bedside nurse (Except in ICU etc). I had surgery in one of the best Boston hospitals ten years ago. For the first day, I was cared for ok, but after that, I saw a nurse (?) when I got pain pills. I was given two every six hours, when what I needed was one every four hours. So I was oversedated for three hours and in pain two hours. After several requests, I started hiding my pain pills so I could take them when I wanted to take them. No one noticed. They didn't supervise me, so when I was told I wouldn't go home until I moved my bowels, I lied, so I could go home. No nurse asked why I had no visitors, nor checked post discharge planning, so I was sent home in a taxi to my waiting teenaged adopted sons who barely spoke English, couldn't drive, and who of course couldn't pick up my pain medications (luckily I still had my stash from ones I didn't take).

    But what was worse, is that when I walked myself (no help) down the hall, the nurses were busy typing medical information on their shiny new computers....And as soon as the other patients found I was an MD, I was grilled about their medical problems. (nurses used to teach, but the computers came first. As for doctor visits, that was five mintues a day).


    Nurses are also responsible for all the documentation that has to go into the chart. And suffice it to say that in today's litiginious environment, documenting care has become more important than actually giving care.

     

    posted by Sydney on 6/21/2004 07:51:00 AM 0 comments

    0 Comments:

    Post a Comment

    This page is powered by Blogger, the easy way to update your web site.

    Main Page

    Ads

    Home   |   Archives

    Copyright 2006