And now, for another entry into the great annals of healthcare history. I’m a day late, but well, such is life. Anton won’t hold it against me.

For those of you with a fascination for microbes, today (yesterday) marks the birth of one of the most famous experts on teensy organisms, and indeed, a man who certainly advanced the science that we now know as microbiology. I was forced to take microbiology, 2 semesters of it, as a prerequisite for nursing school, and it’s a shame that one of the professors was such a dork. I think her goal in life was to fail as many students as possible, by making her exams totally unreadable. Several students complained to the dean about her, so it wasn’t just my lack of intelligence or personal vendetta against this bitch that was making me imagine that she had some screws loose.

But back to the info at hand–onn this date in 1632, Anton van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, The Netherlands. Same city as the artist VerMeer. Van Leeuwenhoek was a cloth merchant by trade, not a scientist, but apparently, the sciences intrigued him far more than did his cottons and linens. He created over 400 primitive hand-ground lenses and completely fascinated by the unseen world, he used to his lenses to study the microscopic make-up of things such as hair, blood, etc. He was able to magnify specimens over 200 times, which was quite a featm, and hired an illustrator to draw the hidden world that he had discovered. With his microscopes, van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, blood cells, sperm, microscopic nematodes and the rotifer, a minute aquatic organism.

I’m rather shocked that I haven’t gotten avalanche of nasty comments from the self-professed nurse police, considering all remarks I made about Suzanne Gordon’s article. Her name is sacred in some nursing circles, where she is viewed as one of the profession’s chief advocates. But as we all know, advocacy only goes so far when one does not have first hand experience. Gordon has never worked as a nurse, has never gone through the joke called nursing school, and her writings reflect that.

She has never dealt with bitchy co-workers, brain dead nurse managers, or have your saintly nursing colleagues tell you “This is how we do it here. You don’t like it, quit.” Gordon sees nurses in their philosophical form, and also doesn’t notice that many of nursing professions problems originate within the nurses themselves. As I said, she believes (at least from what she writes) that nurses are helpless victims waiting for their shining prince to save them. They are blameless in the vast sea of healthcare problems, and can do nothing of their own accord to help correct the situation.

So yes, I am surprised. Especially since I don’t feel that the media’s portrayal of nurses–which in general sucks–has any real impact on this nursing shortage, or of all of the shortages which came before.