This was another ditty that I’ve had hidden in my draft file for several months, and unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to the link. But it amused me, to think that educating oneself to work as a nurse suddenly became as indelible as skin color. Or ethnic background. Or eye color (although contact lenses have changed that).

Is a nurse always a nurse? Is it something that hangs around your neck like a ball and chain no matter what else you do in life?

Apparently, even if you scrub yourself with Chlorax and steel wool, and incinerate your license, and drop your nursing gear into a crater on Mars, you are still a nurse. First and foremost.

Nurses may add JD, MBA, or EdD to their names, but while they may not work in a clinical setting, they are still nurses.

“Whether working with computers in nursing, in forensic investigations, as a pharmaceutical sales representative, or as a quality assurance coordinator, each nurse brings something special, something compassionate, some healing touch to someone, somewhere,” she says.

I think that the person who wrote is one of the starry eyed beings who thinks nurses are angels of mercy, and getting an RN license is akin to a pair of silvery winger.  You’re still a nurse first and foremost, no matter what else you do? Please, spare me the sentiment before I start feeling  queasy.

If a nurse returns to school and becomes an MD (I know, sacrilegious), does he/she still consider himself/herself a “nurse first and foremost?” Or a physician? I think the answer to that is obvious.

If a nurse becomes an expert sculptor and opens a pottery studio, does she apply the “healing touch” to all of those vases and urns? Does she tell her customers that she’s really a nurse underneath those clay stained hands, and just dabbling in pottery? And is making pottery for the healing experience?

Yes, you can see where this is going. What is it with nurses, that they must cling to these adages. Take the case of Clara Barton. She is widely considered to be a nurse, especially among nurses who proudly add her names to the ranks of the historical nurse elite. And they will bristle if you tell them otherwise.

But truth be known, Clara Barton was a school teacher. Then a patent clerk. And when she took her wagon full of supplies out onto the battlefield, she had no training as a nurse and did so out of frustration. She saw supplies sitting in Washington DC, while soldiers were dying a few miles away. So Barton being a strong minded woman took it upon herself to bring those supplies out to where they were needed, and ended up assisting in the battlefield. But when the war ended, so did Barton’s “nursing career.” She spent the next several years locating missing soldiers, and then established the American Red Cross.

So now, Barton is an interesting case. She had 2 careers before her stint as a nurse, which was by far the shortest career of all. So should we say that Barton was first and foremost a teacher? Wasn’t she still a teacher then, when she headed off to madness and mayhem in the war zone? Or still a patent clerk? Or do those jobs not count?

She lived for almost 91 years and spent 3 of them doing her “angel of the battlefield” stint. And if there hadn’t been a war, it is highly unlikely that Barton ever would have ministered to the sick and injured. She was a teacher–founded her own school, the first woman to hold a clerkship in the patent office, and then the bulk of her life was dedicated to the Red Cross. She was also involved in the women’s suffrage movement, and the early civil rights movement for black Americans.

But first and foremost, Barton is a nurse?

If someone spends five years working as an accountant, then becomes a nurse and works in the field for 2 years, and then goes on to become an English teacher for the next 25 years, is “nurse” the shining moment of her life? The height of her identity, the pinnacle moment?

You know what I think. What do you all think? Does nursing override everything you’ve done before and afterwards, like indelible ink?