No, I don’t mean blocking nurses. I’m talking about nurses as a voting block. And no again, I don’t think nurses vote as a block. Not even remotely.

It is silly to think that certain groups of people are similar, simply because they work in the same profession.  In my experience as a nurse, for example, I worked with nurses who were male, female, gay, straight, fat, skinny, short, tall, and who came from all walks of life.  Some were born in other countries, some born in poverty, some well to do, and their life experiences before, during and after becoming a nurse varied dramatically.

In this same vein of thought, some nurses I met were racist, bigots, narrow minded, ignorant, just plain stupid, mean, malicious, psychotic, and substance abusers. Others were kind, thoughtful, honest, hard working, open minded, brilliant, sweet, loving, and mentally healthy.

On the political front, and politics were rarely a topic of conversation for obvious reasons in the workplace (just like religion–best to leave it alone), I do know that nurses selected their candidates much the same way other Americans do. There was no “standard” nurse vote. No nurse voting block.

The reason I bring this up is because healthcare is such a big issue on the ballot. It is an issue for everyone really, because at some point, everyone is going to use the healthcare system in one form or another. But just because one is a nurse doesn’t mean that healthcare is the most important or pressing issue on the agenda, or the issue that raises the most concern. Just being a nurse doesn’t mean that the vote will go to the candidate with the best healthcare agenda. Other factors may be more important, such as the candidate’s position on what to do with the Iraq mess, environmental concerns, schools, and so on. A nurse who has a relative dying from ALS might be very keen on what the candidate’s think of stem cell research and who is going to support it, for example.

Anyway, I started thinking about this–how certain groups of people are often placed into arbitrary clusters as if they were generic and of one mind. What brought it on was the memory of what some guy once said to me in LA, when I was sitting outside reading. He lived in my apt building, and I had never spoken to him before. He struck up a conversation, and when I remarked that I worked as a nurse, he nodded his head.

“I like nurses,” he said. “They’re good people.”

The generic nurse. Even the nurse who kills patients or who falsifies patient charts is “good people.” If I said I was a mortician, do you think he would have made such a stupid comment? Or if I said I was a dentist? Does anyone ever say, “I like dentists. They’re good people.”