Nurses work with high-tech, complex equipment, and toxic medications.
Nurses exercise critical thinking skills commensurate with their diverse specialties and educational levels.
Nurses contribute to academia, physical and social sciences, law, psychology, medicine, sociology, business, social work, and communications.
Nurses make snap decisions in life-and-death situations.
Nurses study pharmacology, anatomy, pathophysiology, and ethics.
Nurses contribute to medical cures and medical diagnoses.
Nurses create innovative ideas, processes, products, and procedures.
Nurses use physical assessment skills to deliver holistic care.
Nurses save money and lives.
Nurses administer medications and treatments.
Nurses study psychology and communication.
Nurses lessen suffering and rescue people from preventable complications.
Nurses play critical roles in patient safety.
Nurses teach, advise, and educate.
Nurses prevent medical errors and costly complications.
Nurses advocate and intervene for patients.
Nurses practice from a foundation of evidence-based knowledge.
Nurses work with vulnerable humans who are anxious, frightened, irritable, and sometimes angry.
Nurses help those people survive and thrive.
Nurses are valued as the most trusted profession in the United States for the 18th year running.
Nursing Care is Consequential
Nurses appreciate the gratitude and trust, we do. But allowing the media to fictionalize nursing has only allowed us to remain misunderstood. It’s wonderful that we are trustworthy, but it benefits no one if what we actually do remains disconnected from those who trust us.
It’s not our patient’s fault. It’s not the public’s fault. It’s not even the media’s fault that nursing has been sentimentalized beyond recognition.
Our unique education and credentials belong to our profession alone. So it is our responsibility to spread the word about who we are and what we do. And, as a group, we can no longer afford to support our profession on the shaky stilts of trust and compassion.
We will never boost our professional status when it’s associated with ridiculous medical dramas or organizations that have their own agendas such as Johnson & Johnson or the DAISY Foundation.
Most people, even nurses, think these entities are advancing the profession but, with all their ‘honoring’ and ‘saluting,’ they’re downplaying the nursing standards and practices that make us a profession. Their focus on compassion mitigates the vast body of nursing knowledge that underlies our professionalism.
To raise the status of our profession, we have a legacy of clinical knowledge and skills at our disposal, and it’s time we used it. It’s our responsibility to push past the simplistic care narrative that surrounds us.
It’s our job to let the masses know that what nurses do every day does not “come naturally.” What we do is the product of education, instruction, self-mastery, expertise, experience, and, at times, absolute grit.
Nursing is consequential, not because nurses care but because of what nurses know.