Reading about the nursing shortage really becomes tiring after a while, because it is a problem that can be fixed–if anyone is so inclined to really fix it.
Let’s face it, nursing has been a woman’s profession since Florence Nightingale declared it to be in 1860. Her experimental school clearly omitted men, as well as setting up a two-tier policy. For all of the proposed altruism, ie, the nurse as healer of the sick, Nightingale made it clear that the current hierarchy in English society was not to messed with. The common girls were classifed as “nurse probationers” while the upper class (to which Nightingale belonged) were “lady probabtioners.” The ladies were groomed to be in charge, while the lowly gutter snipes were groomed for a life of hard labor and servitude–which is what early nursing essentially was. Scrub, cook, clean, mop floors, wash linens, empty chamber pots, and take passively take orders from both matrons and doctors.
The passivity and “femaleness” of nursing has largely remained, despite the changes which have taken place over the past 145 years. A letter I read recently, written to the editor of a nursing journal, made a very succinct point. Changes in nursing have largely occurred not because of what nurses have themselves done, but merely because of circumstances.
Yes, I know. There are unions and some strong-willed and eloquent nurses who have taken the fight to hospital administrators and city hall. But primarily, nurses seem to do battle by leaving the profession. The ranks become thinned, high school students looking at career options view nursing as something worse than the plague. Nurses discourage others from entering the profession. And so a shortage erupts. We’ve had nursing shortages since WW II, and even when they weren’t acute, there was never a time when nursing jobs were at a surplus. You could always find a job, even during the early-mid 1990s when cost cutting went out of control. It may not have been the job of your dream, but they were there. I worked in California at the height of lay-offs and downsizing, and between my two per diem jobs, I had more work than I could possibly handle.
Anyway, conditions and pay improve when hospitals become desperate. And it is interesting to note, that in this day and age of “crisis” and “dire” conditions, many nurses are simply floating along, bitching and moaning but not demanding to be treated with respect. Refusing to say no to unsafe working conditions, refusing to press charges against abusive physicians or other personnel, and allowing themselves to be treated like the proverbial doormat.
In the mid-1980s, when another severe shortage was making everyone moan and groan, I wondered why nurses didn’t just grab the healthcare system by the balls and squeeze. And now, alongside the stories of desperate medical facilities are the tales of continued nurse abuse and nurse inaction. The improvements in pay and other perks happened, for the most part, because someone else decided that it might help convince nurses to return to the profession and bring new people in.
Sad but true. The person who wrote that letter was still working as a nurse, but I wonder for how much longer?