We are forced into picking our future careers when we're 17 years old, only seniors in high school. This affects our college choices—if we decide to GO to college. Choosing a major, and in that case a future career, is incredibly stressful to most high schoolers looking into going to college.
For me, however, that choice was an easy one.
When I signed on to attend the University of Portland, they had a section where you were supposed to write in your choice of major. Writing out the word "nursing" was actually one of the easiest things I've had to do.
I arrived onto campus as a very eager, excited freshman, ready to learn, ready to start becoming the nurse that I wanted to be. I've been here a month now, and while my choice of major has not shifted at all, my perception has.
My family was incredibly supportive of me deciding to become a nurse. My grandmother was a nurse for 50 years, my cousin is also in school to become a nurse. It seemed to be a familial trait, the want to be a nurse. I set out with high expectations and big dreams. These dreams are the same, but I've learned quite a bit in my four weeks here. People have very set-in-stone views of nurses, and therefore nursing majors.
One instance of my run-ins with these people was in the elevator in my dorm building. We had started small talk, and when this person asked what my major was, and I said nursing, their exact words were, "Aw, that's so cute!".
Cute? Why is that the reaction that I got when I said I was in nursing school? This was my first personal experience with the stereotypes and the perceptions that people have of nurses and nursing students.
Had I been quicker thinking, I would have asked this person, "what do you think is cute about nursing?"
Is it the long shifts on their feet, 13 hours without end, until they're so exhausted they can't even think about eating or using the restroom, which they haven't done since the start of their shift?
Is it the vast amounts of knowledge and tiny details they have to keep on hand at all times? Is it the extensive variations of things they have to know, off the top of their heads?
Is it the lives they save? Is it the IVs they stick, the vomit they clean off of patients that can't do so for themselves?
Is it the lives that they can't save? Is it the comforting grieving families, or "pulling the plug" on a brain-dead patient? Is it standing by as a patient with a do-not-resuscitate goes into cardiac arrest?
Society's perception of nurses is so radically skewed, it's frustrating to even begin to correct people on how wrong they are about what nurses are and what they do. When you see a nurse in the media, what do you think of? You think of the short skirts, the funny hats with the red crosses on them. Often times, you think of Halloween costumes. "Sexy Nurse Uniform" is a staple in most costume/Halloween stores. Have you ever actually looked at them? No way would a real nurse ever wear that in real life. They're horribly impractical.
Last year, Kelley Johnson, Miss Colorado, delivered a monologue about being a nurse instead of twirling a baton or singing a song in the Miss America Pageant. I distinctly remember someone comment something about her wearing a "doctor's outfit and stethoscope" when she appeared on stage in her scrubs. Our vision of nurses is so wrong that people don't know that nurses ACTUALLY wear scrubs and use stethoscopes. Those are not specific to doctors, believe it or not.
Nurses are not the doctor's little assistants in cute little white uniforms who take people's temperatures. It is not a "cute" job. They are medical professionals, they are caretakers, they are life savers. If we want to change how our society views nurses, we must stop referring to them as anything but that: life savers.
Nurses are so much more than what people want to believe them to be. I'm going to be one of them, and I'm proud of that.
Admire nurses. Respect nurses. They more than deserve it.
