According to a new Gallup poll, nurses are the bastion of respect and honesty. Those babes in white are to trusted above anyone else.

PRINCETON, NJ — For the seventh straight year, nurses enjoy top public accolades in Gallup’s annual Honesty and Ethics of professions survey. Eighty-four percent of Americans call their honesty and ethical standards either “high” or “very high.”

This year’s results are based on a Nov. 7-9 USA Today/Gallup poll rating the honesty and ethics of workers in 21 different professions.

Nurses have topped Gallup’s Honesty and Ethics ranking every year but one since they were added to the list in 1999. The exception is 2001, when firefighters were included on the list on a one-time basis, shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. (Firefighters earned a record-high 90% honesty and ethics rating in that survey.

It is nice to be so trusted, but where does trust get you? Trust without respect is meaningless, particularly in the workplace. Patients often treat nurses like they are the “hired help,” like the nurse was their private servant.  And they treat nurses like they are the upper class and nurses are lowly working class drudge.  And of course, some nurses reinforce that image by not sticking up for themselves, and demonstrate to the patient that they are nothing more than servant labor–by grabbing a mop instead of calling housekeeping, or washing down the shower!

Administration also has little respect for nurses–I don’t know how many nurses talk about punching a time clock. Gee, we’re supposed to be professionals and instead, playing Laverne and Shirley? At least factory workers tend to be union members, which is more than I can say for nurses.

But in the words of Aretha Franklin:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Nurses need to add that word to their vocabulary, and demand it.