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s/o teen emotions: Nurses vs Doctors


Katy
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See... I can't deal with the public. I HATED my jobs in customer service / sales. Anything dealing with one person much less more than one. I knew what a nurse's job was and just nope. It is a great job, an honorable job, but I'd be terrible at it for this very reason! Not so much the patients, but the docs, for sure, I don't deal with that bullcrap. You can't pay me enough.

 

As for me, I just leave the house. I'm sure this causes some kind of long-term attachment issues but at this point "staying calm" is not possible in the home some days.

 

This is totally off-topic of the teen emotions draining you thread, but I have a lot to say about this.  I don't know where people get this idea that doctors bully nurses.  IME, that never happens unless it's some brand new grad who doesn't know any better, or it's a fictional TV drama plot that is nothing similar to reality at all. Nurses run hospitals, not doctors, and doctors know that.  Even in nursing school I never heard any condescension from a doctor.  Maybe a resident or medical student or a patient, but not a doctor.  If anything doctors are kind, or even flirtatious. Too many doctors have had their asses saved by an observant nurse to be rude. I suspect this is for the same reason that nurse practitioners tend to make better primary care providers: bedside experience.  Doctors know that nurses get a feel for the intangibles about a particular patient. It's like an apprenticeship in medicine.  We might have skipped organic chemistry, but spending all day surrounded by sick people for years, reporting lab results, asking for medicine changes, watching new medical school grads cycle through, simultaneously full of themselves and knowing absolutely nothing about the way day to day medicine works...

 

The reality in most hospitals is that more likely than not, once you're admitted a doctor will do rounds once or twice a day, and the rest of the time a nurse only calls a doctor if (s)he already knows something has changed that will change the doctor's treatment plan, and more than likely already knows how the medicine/dosage/testing will change.  If a harried doctor forgets something, it is not considered rude to ask about a particular test or drug or anything relevant.  And when uppity new grads on rounds forget something, it is extremely common for the doctor doing rounds with them to interrupt a nurse, or rarely, even a tech with just a few month's training but six months experience on that hospital floor, ask them the exact same question the new grads failed, and get the right answer. They might not know about rare conditions, but the common ones make up most of medicine.  And some things, intangible things, you only know from being there.  The subtle difference between heavy bleeding and hemorrhaging in a surgical patient.  The difference in the smells of diarrhea caused by food poisoning, C-diff, or cancer.  More than once I've heard a nurse whisper to a doctor "smells like cancer" to a patient being treated for c-diff or even septicemia, a test is run because that was whispered, and 36 hours later the patient is being transferred to oncology or hospice.

 

The reality is that if a doctor has worked at a hospital for more than a few years, doctors and nurses have different roles, but they respect each other.  They sneak into the nurses lounge and gossip about the latest odd surgery that needed to be done because an ER admit lost his wife's sex toy inside him (PSA: get special toys that can't get lost for that area).  There are certain types of doctors that tend to be jerks (neurology, I'm looking at you!), but generally they're all wonderful.  There's a reason why doctors frequently marry nurses. I can rarely stand watching medical tv shows at all because I can't get around the fact that 90% of the time the "drama" on tv shows that isn't surgery or choosing a medicine are tasks done by nurses, not doctors.

 

PSA for those of you with kids interested in medicine: Your kid can get a CNA job at a nursing home at 16, then either take an advanced CNA course and switch to being a hospital tech OR get a medicine technician course and pass out meds at a nursing home.  Either one of those options pays somewhere between $10-15/hour and will give you a scholarship to nursing school. If they go to a community college, they can be an LPN in one year ($15-18 in nursing homes), an RN in two years ($20-$30/hour depending on where they work), and finish a BSN in one more year ($50-$65k+ salary, plus usually great benefits).  At that point they can go into management, take a specialty course on becoming a nurse educator to train patients, or get a graduate degree and either teach nursing or work as a practitioner in any field of medicine except surgery.  All of that without student loans or the insane amount of stress that comes with being a doctor with $200K in loans.  Plus, most nurses don't stay in nursing.  Most get out and work in other related fields. I chose insurance.  Then I chose to stay at home. Point being, if you have the stomach for body fluids and terrible smells, you or your kids can go back to school and not take on debt, and get very good paying jobs without student loans even if you have no savings and DH makes too much for financial aid.

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I have a friend who is a nurse in Jersey - she actually oversees her particular shift. Apparently the doctors there both respect and loathe the nurses. They tend to be condescending and think highly of themselves but acknowledge they actually know less about the patients, especially dosing and side effects of medications, than the nurses. She is probably biased but considers most of the doctors total tools who don't know what they're doing half as much as they should.

 

Her stories of catching errors in dosing and hypoxia in her elderly patients from improper sedation are truly chilling.

Edited by Arctic Mama
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It's similar in veterinary medicine. The doctors, particularly the new grads, know that they couldn't survive without the vet techs. And many have sat and discussed possible treatment options,diagnosis considerations, etc with me. Obviously, they get the last word, but my opinion was always respected, again more with new grads, for good reason. And yes, if a tech says "looks like a back issue" or "sounds like kennel cough" or "You need to come in here immediately" that is respected as well. 

 

I did laugh at the diarrhea thing....I certainly know what parvo smells like!

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Katy, THANK YOU!  Everything you wrote is so true.  I wish people would figure out that TV isn't real life.  My husband is a physician and I'm a pharmacist.  We both work in hospitals.  Each profession plays a role.  Usually they all respect the role the others play.  Rarely one will step outside the bounds of that role and there might be a bit of trouble.  But generally a doctor wants a good relationship with the nurses so that they take good care of his/her patients thus leading to greater patient satisfaction and less middle of the night calls.

 

My dh just took on the hospital where we work to get the nurses a raise (successfully).  The hospital decided to require that all the departments have color coded scrubs which would require the nurses to purchase new scrubs.  While not as far as we wish it would have gone, the hospital agreed to purchase one pair of scrubs for each employee. 

 

There are a few jerks in all fields, but nasty doctor would probably be an equally nasty banker.  

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Maybe it's regional.  Catching errors is very common, perhaps even a daily occurrence. Condescension isn't IME.

 

I mean if a nurse stops telling you when there's a problem because you're rude, people will die, and if it happens more than once or is egregious, you'll lose your license. If you're too rude, the nurse can report you directly, and still cause huge problems.  Freedom from harassment and all that.

 

Then again, I worked mostly for Catholic Health Initiatives hospitals.  Where nuns with nursing & hospital administration degrees are still largely in charge. My one longer stint in a non-Catholic hospital was in Colorado and lasted less than six months. I attributed that to terrible safety laws in Colorado, but maybe it was just the hospital chain.  PSA:  the "best" hospital in the metro Denver area I would NEVER let my own family go to.

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Maybe it's regional. Catching errors is very common, perhaps even a daily occurrence. Condescension isn't IME.

 

I mean if a nurse stops telling you when there's a problem because you're rude, people will die, and if it happens more than once or is egregious, you'll lose your license. If you're too rude, the nurse can report you directly, and still cause huge problems. Freedom from harassment and all that.

 

Then again, I worked mostly for Catholic Health Initiatives hospitals. Where nuns with nursing & hospital administration degrees are still largely in charge. My one longer stint in a non-Catholic hospital was in Colorado and lasted less than six months. I attributed that to terrible safety laws in Colorado, but maybe it was just the hospital chain. PSA: the "best" hospital in the metro Denver area I would NEVER let my own family go to.

 

That is the case up here as well. We went to the 'best' hospital for years. Now we are going to the smaller, older one and getting better care at a fraction of the price. I wish we had known that when we first moved up here! We would have saved about 60k :(

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I work in pharmacy.  There are only a few doctors who are known to be condescending jerks in our area.  Ironically, the reason we have to deal with them specifically so often, is because of the doctor's own errors.  Not huge errors, but things like sloppy or vague handwriting, off label use of meds, incomplete instructions, etc.  Things that if they took one extra minute to write correctly or even just put a note on the prescription for us, then it wouldn't even take a phone call. 

 

The worst ones are often residents at the teaching hospitals.  Some of them are so arrogant and  think they know wayyyyyy more than they do.  LOL  I think it comes from being in school and being graded/challenged all the time.  They are always in defensive mode and it takes a while to get past that. Quite often, If we have to call them for a clarification on a prescription, they get defensive and try to act like we don't know what we are doing.   Instead of just saying...'the answer you need is ABC, thanks for calling.'   

 

 

The overwhelming amount of doctors know that it is a team effort.  That ALL health care staff, from the janitors, to the nurses, to the doctors, to the pharmacy, all are just as important in the patients care.  No one piece of the puzzle is more important.  No one piece is less human. 

 

 

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I was never a nurse, but a medical assistant and no doctor was ever mean to me. 

 

I also once had a job working in a nursing home.  I took doctor calls.  They weren't ever rude then either. 

 

And yet another job working for an answering service.  Even calling doctors at 2 in the morning...they weren't rude or jerks. 

 

Like any profession there are jerks, but I don't get the impression that doctors are generally jerks.

 

I worked in various types of medical offices.  Probably the doctors with the strongest personalities that I encountered were surgeons.  No clue if I just got lucky, but yes they were "interesting" people. Some of them knew they had very special skills and would sometimes brag.  They weren't really jerks though. 

 

 

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I'm a nurse, and I see plenty of undesirable interaction with doctors. I'm glad your experience was different, and I wish I could agree with you, but I can't. I work closely with a couple of doctors that have been severely reprimanded for the way they treat nurses. I've seen surgeons throw tantrums in the OR during a surgery. I've seen nurses too afraid to call a doctor at night, because of the verbal abuse they knew was coming. Fortunately, most of them are perfectly capable of having a respectful working relationship. Some facilities take physician bullying seriously, but not all do, especially if the physician is in an area of high demand with a doctor shortage.

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Thanks, Katy! I totally agree. Nurses saved me so many times as a medical student and a resident. My favorites were the PICU and NICU nurses. When I was training we were alone on call as a second year resident, no attending or fellow in house with us. The nicest nurses would say things like "In most situations x and y are ordered." when they would call us at night in order to allow us to pretend like we knew what we were doing. ;) And in a real emergency any resident knew to listen to the nurses who had way more experience and knowledge. I've seen a handful of doctors who were jerks to nurses and they almost always eventually learned their lesson. But for the most part the doctors I know look at nurses as other members of a team (along with pharmacists and RTs and PTs and OTs and child life and the nutritionist and the lactation consultant and the social worker and, and, and...) 

Medical training is completely different now (which is a whole separate topic) but when I have a really sick kid in the hospital I call the nurse to talk about them and see how they are doing before I call the resident. I trust the nurses' judgment more. 

 

What I usually tell people who ask me if their child should consider a career as a nurse or doctor is that they are really different jobs. They complement each other but they are different. Instead of considering only things like cost of education or years in training or ultimate salaries I think it makes more sense to consider the person's  strengths and weaknesses and why they want to do medicine at all. 

 

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I'm a nurse, and I see plenty of undesirable interaction with doctors. I'm glad your experience was different, and I wish I could agree with you, but I can't. I work closely with a couple of doctors that have been severely reprimanded for the way they treat nurses. I've seen surgeons throw tantrums in the OR during a surgery. I've seen nurses too afraid to call a doctor at night, because of the verbal abuse they knew was coming. Fortunately, most of them are perfectly capable of having a respectful working relationship. Some facilities take physician bullying seriously, but not all do, especially if the physician is in an area of high demand with a doctor shortage.

 

Well, surgeons, that's a whole different breed. :) 

 

Just kidding, now that I've offended all the surgeons and family members of surgeons out there. 

 

And I am sorry that you've experienced any abuse or bullying from physicians. 

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I don't think that all doctors do it. It only takes one person and you're dealing with it all the time, like several times a night.

 

4/5 docs can be awesome and you still have to deal with someone freaking out 2x /week. And when it's someone who is supposed to be in leadership--well, no, I won't deal.

 

I have heard many nurses, Nurse midwives, and others complain about belligerent doctors and hospital administrators.

 

That doesn't mean I think all doctors are bullies, just that it can happen and I would not be able to handle it in a clinical environment.

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Bankers I can deal with because if I walk out of that room to preserve self respect nobody dies.

 

My post was not meant to be about a weajness of all doctors (I'm sure your husband is great Katy) but of my own limits. Does that make sense?

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Bankers I can deal with because if I walk out of that room to preserve self respect nobody dies.

 

My post was not meant to be about a weajness of all doctors (I'm sure your husband is great Katy) but of my own limits. Does that make sense?

 

Oh no, DH is an engineer!  Several close friends married doctors or are doctors though.

 

I saw a show not too long ago.  I think it was an episode of 20/20 where they talked about the prevalence of hazing among nurses.  I was stunned! 

 

Yes. I never had that experience as a nurse, but while in school.  When I figured out I didn't want to be a lawyer, and that politicians are more concerned with their own party loyalty than with doing what they know is right, and my ridiculously expensive political science degree was useless for anything else without grad school, I spent six months at a boring tech job then went back to school for nursing.  I started as a CNA, and then I figured out after about six months I could make twice as much money in half the time working as a temp at lots of different hospitals and nursing homes.  A few of them were HORRIBLE.  And then they'd wonder why they couldn't get anyone to come back.  In one place I was offered three times the pay to go back just because the staff (CNA's & Nurses) had been so awful to everyone they might have to shut down because they couldn't meet legal staffing requirements.   At one place it literally got to a point where I ignored every other worker and only spoke to the charge nurse.  It was worth it because I made enough in that week fall break from school to pay for two month's expenses, but if I hadn't wanted that money to work less during the semester, I never would have gone back.

 

Most places I worked had a lot of camaraderie, and even people I only worked with for six months still keep in touch on facebook, even as they've gone off to be in hospital management or become nurse practitioners or whatever.

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TBut for the most part the doctors I know look at nurses as other members of a team (along with pharmacists and RTs and PTs and OTs and child life and the nutritionist and the lactation consultant and the social worker and, and, and...) 

 

 

I have no personal experience in the medical profession but my dearest friend is a doctor who runs an inpatient program at a major teaching/research hospital.  I am always struck by just how many different people and departments need to work together in her program.   Like you say, it's not just M.D.s, and R.N.s -- it's nurse practitioners, social workers, Ph.Ds in various disciplines, dietitians, therapists, and the list goes on and on.   It is all way more cross-disciplinary than I had thought.  The occasional person who is not a team player -- sometimes a doctor, but not always-- drives her absolutely bananas and makes her job epically more difficult. (Unfortunately, she has limited authority to hire and fire, which is another story...)

 

 

 

 

 

 
Edited by JennyD
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I have mixed feelings on this.  I grew up in a nurse/doctor family, and a lot in my generation are also in medical care, and I've worked a little in maternity care. 

 

I know plenty of doctors that are very nice to nurses, but my impression is that some types are more likely to be arrogant SOBs, to everyone.  Surgeons are famous for not being people oriented, and while a stereotype I think there is some truth there - it takes a particular sort of confidence, perhaps, to cut someone into bits.  I wasn't that impressed with a lot of the OBs I saw either, or the way they treated women, nurses, or midwives.

 

I also think there has been a significant cultural change.  When my mom started nursing, they still wore starched uniforms that had to go to a Chinese laundry, had to line up the wheels on the hospital beds, and used glass syringes.  There were strict expectations for how doctors were treated - a weird combination of treating them like gods while also despising them a little.  

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I've been a nurse for 18 years. I wish I could say my experience was the same as the OP. The times I have been chewed out by a doctor on a power trip are few and far between but they stand out. To be honest, it just makes the doctor look like a fool and I wish they could see that. There are jerks everywhere, even in medicine.

 

My husband is a nurse too. It is interesting how these jerk mds will treat a male nurse different from a female nurse.

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I'm a nurse, and I see plenty of undesirable interaction with doctors. I'm glad your experience was different, and I wish I could agree with you, but I can't. I work closely with a couple of doctors that have been severely reprimanded for the way they treat nurses. I've seen surgeons throw tantrums in the OR during a surgery. I've seen nurses too afraid to call a doctor at night, because of the verbal abuse they knew was coming. Fortunately, most of them are perfectly capable of having a respectful working relationship. Some facilities take physician bullying seriously, but not all do, especially if the physician is in an area of high demand with a doctor shortage.

Also a nurse. One of the reasons I don't particularly want to go back to floor work is dealing with physicians. Some are great. Some are neutral. Some are horrible.

 

Working nights can be hard. You get yelled at for waking up a doctor even if technically you should. You get yelled at for not calling sooner because you were afraid to call and get yelled at.

 

In a lot of facilities, doctors bring in the patients. You go to X hospital because your OB delivers there, your surgeon operates there, etc. I think some hospitals are much more supportive of nursing staff than others. But, across the board, there is no consensus that nurses are the most important team players.

 

I've also witnessed (more than once) physicians make decisions that could (or did) cost someone's life. It can be very challenging to "go over their head". In a serious situation, it took us hours to get a chief of staff to come in and deal with something.

 

It's also a hard dynamic. In a hospital environment, a doctor is not a nurse's boss. A nurse has a nurse manager she answers to. There can also be very little relationship. A GI doc may round on an OB patient. He doesn't know any of the OB nurses and there is no trust there. No knowledge if the nurse he is working with knows her stuff or is straight out of school.

 

I've definitely worked with physicians I loved and respected. But, I've also dealt with doctors who treated me like crap, and I had zero recourse.

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Oh no, DH is an engineer!  Several close friends married doctors or are doctors though.

 

 

Yes. I never had that experience as a nurse, but while in school.  When I figured out I didn't want to be a lawyer, and that politicians are more concerned with their own party loyalty than with doing what they know is right, and my ridiculously expensive political science degree was useless for anything else without grad school, I spent six months at a boring tech job then went back to school for nursing.  I started as a CNA, and then I figured out after about six months I could make twice as much money in half the time working as a temp at lots of different hospitals and nursing homes.  A few of them were HORRIBLE.  And then they'd wonder why they couldn't get anyone to come back.  In one place I was offered three times the pay to go back just because the staff (CNA's & Nurses) had been so awful to everyone they might have to shut down because they couldn't meet legal staffing requirements.   At one place it literally got to a point where I ignored every other worker and only spoke to the charge nurse.  It was worth it because I made enough in that week fall break from school to pay for two month's expenses, but if I hadn't wanted that money to work less during the semester, I never would have gone back.

 

Most places I worked had a lot of camaraderie, and even people I only worked with for six months still keep in touch on facebook, even as they've gone off to be in hospital management or become nurse practitioners or whatever.

 

I have not worked in a hospital, but I do have a LOT of family that works in hospitals, including both nurses and doctors.

 

My point was that I couldn't deal with the jerks in a hospital, not to generalize. I can smile and nod at my boss and then go home early. A nurse cannot do that, you know? It is a completely different level of badassery required of nurses for the sake of the patients.

 

I answered from a phone but I hope that's clear. It's not about doctors per se, it's about the whole hospital environment and requirements there, so when you have a dispute with someone, you can't call a meeting and stuff. You need to be the one that calms the doc down. I am not good at that. I'm good at getting my way. ;) And no, I don't want to be a doctor... I would not be good at that either!

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