Nurses As Children

I had to go to corporate’s quarterly nurse education meeting today and sit through a 3 hour class on how to communicate with doctors.  I can’t decide what pissed me off more, the fact that they felt a class like this was necessary or the way in which the class was conducted.

The docs had been complaining because they were receiving phone calls like this:

Nurse: ” The order says to call you if the patients’s blood sugar is over 250 and it’s 251.”

Doctor: “What have his blood sugars been before now?”

Nurse:  ”I don’t know.  Wait a minute and I’ll look it up.”

Doctor:  ”Has he done anything different?  Did his diet or his medications change?  Has he taken all of his meds today?  What is he on to control his blood sugars?”

Nurse:  ”I don’t know.  Let me go ask him and I’ll call you back.”

Are nursing schools turning out idiots these days?  No wonder some doctors have attitudes! When someone wastes my time like that I get furious!!

So the folks at corporate spent who knows how much time and money developing a system, complete with notebooks and posters and reminder cards to post by the phone, that boils down to something that should have been taught in Basic Nursing 101.  Think about the situation and get your information together before making the call.  But they give you a little reminder card with a cutesy acronym on it so you can remember how to do it.

They even had lists of what events are considered urgent, significant, or informational and code words to use in order to convey the difference. What has happened to nursing judgement?  Does that not exist anymore?  Apparently not if I have to depend on someone else to tell me what is urgent and what is not. They had the gall to offer tips on how to get the doctor’s attention and a time limit (10 seconds) in which to state the problem, give relevant data (30 seconds), and add some history (10 more seconds).  We had to go through case studies in which we did this as well as identify information that was not relevant, including standing in front of a microphone and following their script.

And they asked us if we would be interested in a workshop on critical thinking.  Excuse me?  They have to teach classes on that now? 

 I see and hear all this talk, some of it sounding very defensive, about nursing being a “profession” requiring advanced education, etc. etc. etc. but when I’ve gone to educational meetings given by nurses they very often involve silly games about the topic under discussion with prizes that are usually cheap plastic gizmos with the corporate logo on them.  I don’t think other “professionals” do this.  It’s patronizing and insulting to treat adults like children that have to be bribed to retain information. The doctors I know would walk out on a “professional” meeting conducted like that.

Apparently the situations giving rise to the complaints are occurring in another division rife with new grads and inexperienced nurses.  You don’t get a job in my division unless you are a seasoned, experienced nurse.  No one in the room had less than 10 years experience.  Before the meeting started I was reading through the handouts and made a comment to the director of nursing for my division, “Ann, this is basic nursing.  Why are we doing this?”  She told me that the doctors from (insert name of biggest HMO in the country) were complaining and that they told them they would teach it to all the nurses so I should just pretend it was medicine that I have to take.

Gee, thanks.  31 years as a nurse and, if I say so myself, a damned good one, and I get treated like a child. Does this happen to other nurses in other specialties? Are new nurses really this poorly organized and prepared?  Do the powers that be consider us all to be about 4 years old?  Is this attitude justified?