Skip to main content

Dear View: The Stethoscope is a Tool for ALL Healthcare Providers

In light of the member's of The View's ignorant statements about nurses, how we dress, and the tools we use to do our jobs, let's review a few things.  We can discuss how their behavior denigrates women in general by engaging in catty, superficial commentary focused on nothing substantive at another time.

Stethoscopes are used by the following healthcare providers in addition to physicians:

  • Nurses
  • Respiratory therapists
  • Nurse Practitioners
  • Physician Assistants
They all use the stethoscope as a tool to double check the findings of other professionals. It helps prevent mistakes and catches problems that could be life threatening. Clearly The View thinks only doctors save lives when it is a team effort.

Nurses using stethoscopes in the United States and other countries was a hard fought battle. Physicians did not feel nurses and other healthcare professionals were qualified to use stethoscopes for many years.  Nurses fought long and hard to use them.  Now it is a tool that helps us do our job better and helps us catch problems, often life threatening ones, much earlier.

This battle over who gets to use a stethoscope continues in many low and middle income countries too.  Physicians do not want nurses using stethoscopes simply because they think that tool for healthcare delivery is only for them. Someone else using a stethoscope means incompetence is caught more easily. Symbolically, it is a way to maintain professional dominance over the "market of patients."

The only thing that dynamic does is hurt patients and their quality of care.

And producers of The View, guess how lots of nurses found out about these comments? While working in the hospital, their patients were probably watching. How many of them do you think are going to tell their patients about what the cast said and change the channel?

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it time to get your PhD in Nursing or Midwifery?

 Over the years, I've written a lot about pursuing a PhD in nursing and I'm including midwives because we need more PhD prepared midwives too.  Getting a PhD is a great way to address the problems you've seen on the frontlines of COVID-19, another way to address the social injustices of racism and discrimination on health outcomes, and to make your voice heard by the decision-makers. A third of the 1% of nurses with PhDs will retire in the next five years so we need people to take their place. We cannot lose our voices in all the places where nurses and midwives with PhDs work. Here's a compilation of the posts I've written about getting a PhD and the things to think about as you figure out where you want to apply. PhD or DNP?   This is where many people start when trying to decide on their doctoral-level career advancement. This post has my two cents on the topic. Should you work as a nurse before getting a PhD?   There's a lot of opinions out there on this sub...
3 comments
Read more

The 32 Hour Work Week for Nurses

Sometimes it's nice to see research that confirms a hunch you've had for a few years.  A recent study in Health Affairs , one of the most influential health policy journals in the United States, looked at the effects of 12 hour shifts on patient satisfaction and nurse burnout rates. Turns out, results are not good.  The longer nurses worked in a day, the less satisfied patients were with the quality of care.  In addition, nurses working 12 hour shifts were more likely to become burnt out than those working fewer hours. On the overtime policy front, that's good news for nurses.  The study adds just one more reason why mandatory overtime is bad policy.  It should create incentive for staffing units appropriately and closer to the California standards. From another perspective, we know why nurses like 12 hour shifts.  Let's face it, 3 days a week of work and then a bunch of days off in a row, so many sometimes that you don't have to use vacation day...
Post a Comment
Read more

US Nurses: Vote Today!

Nurses: There is no excuse not to vote .   There is too much at stake this year that affects the health of our patients. Be a smart voter and choose five major issues that affect your job and your patients' ability to get care and services.  Take those five issues and make sure you study how candidates at all levels, from local representation through the president, match up with your perspectives. Voting because of a single issue or stance by a candidate is not good critical thinking.  The world is too complex for your vote to come down to one single thing. Finally, if you experience any voting issues, or are the subject of intimidation from other voters, poll watchers, or election site workers, please call 1-866-OUR -VOTE for legal assistance at no charge.
Post a Comment
Read more

Translate