Nurses truly get the short end of the stick when it comes to outsider view. Many people interested in the medical field dream to become a doctor, very rarely do young kids wish to become a nurse. Even more so, many believe doctors are higher up on the medical food chain because they've been in school for much longer and therefore they must know much more, blah blah blah. However, I have the chance and the capability to go down either path; here's why I will always choose nursing school...
I was one of those kids who, growing up, definitely wanted to be a doctor. I always thought that diagnosing and prescribing medication would, in a way, be like being a super hero. But recent experiences have shown me otherwise. It seems that, more often than not, doctors tend to present themselves for fifteen minutes maximum at a time, and then completely disappear. During this time it seems that rarely what they have to say is caring and/or spirit lifting, or optimistic. Rather, to be blunt, it seems that doctors kinda tend to just piss people off. Especially in emergency cases where many specialized doctors, of all kinds of backgrounds, swarm your room every hour or so in an attempt to give a somewhat far-fetched guess to what may be wrong with you. I guess as a child I was under the impression that doctors could be super heroes because, well, they had all the answers. Unfortunately, as hard as it may be to accept, sometimes, doctors just don't have the answers (not that they'll ever admit that).
Nurses on the other hand, do not get to come and go as they please. Unfortunately, since nurses do get the blunt of it, and families/patients tend to take their emotions out on them, they are stuck "cleaning up the mess" in a sense. It's not like they can just ditch their patients when the road gets a little bumpy. It tends to be the nurses that really try to comfort and get to know you as a person. To them you are not just a patient number in a history folder, but instead a patient with a name. It's not all about the patient either, a nurse is kinda like a waitress in a way, and tends to try to appease the family members as well, fetching endless cups of coffee, magazines, and pillows. Ultimately, the less stress on the family, the less stress on the nurse, and the less stress on the patient.
Another thing about doctors is they tend to be dry. Everything they say is matter-of-fact, and pretty much as scientific as possible. When trying to explain something, they try to dumb it down as much as possible; kind of an attempt to prove that they're "more intelligent" than you by using fancy lingo and then breaking it down, in my opinion at least. They take approximately twenty minutes to do a patient exam, and then go back to their offices, or where ever, to attempt to figure it out. Which I guess isn't completely wrong, but it tends to be somewhat frustrating when doctors see a patient once and then disappear for hours, if not days and only come back with possible "ideas" of what your issue might be, then back at it again with the vanishing act.
Nurses completely know how frustrating this is on families/patients, and sometimes become an advocate for them to get the doctor's ass in the room to actually communicate to the patient whats going on. Nurses tend to connect with their patients a lot, if not most, of their patients.Often times what upsets or frustrates the patient will also fluster the nurse, especially if the doctor is not doing their job.
Not to mention that nurses are the ones that distribute the medications; liquid, pills, or IV. They're the ones who watch for pain and help patients manage it. Constantly checking in as often as needed, sometimes not even taking a second to use the bathroom or to take a drink until their lunch break, which can literally be a six to seven hour wait, no joke. But they stay on their feet, why? Because they actually care. In my experience, as funny as it seems now, my nurse literally sat down next to my bed and looked at a menu with me, helped me pick out dinner, and she even called it in for me. And although it's quite silly, it really touched me that although she was up to her eyeballs in work, she sat down and ordered food for me anyways, because that's what I needed. I won't forget it either, it's the little things that really truly make a nurse so special to their patients.
I won't continue to bore you, or rant on about how doctors are evil, but I will leave you with this... a man at work came up to me one day, being polite he started some small talk asked me if I was going to school. I told him how I recently became a nursing major. This is what he said, "I met a nurse once, and she saved my life. I was never able to thank her for that, so I'm going to thank you. Thank you, you're gonna save lives one day too," and with that he walked away.
