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advocacy, clients, Doctors, equality, Hospital, Medicine, Nurses, nursing, patients, Superiority, Treatment
This articles is not intended to discredit the credibility of doctors but simply to draw the line between nursing and medicine which at times have become shady. Admittedly doctors are superior to nurses in terms of knowledge on diseases, cures, management and the human body. They have worked day and night mastering the arts of healing, studying each and every diseases just to make an ill person better. Without doctors our society will be plague with various diseases and mortality rate will soar above the skies. Doctors and nurses work hand in hand either in the hospital or community setting in order to render proper care to our ailing clients. However, there is this tendency to view doctors as superior to nurses well we cannot blame them for having this kind of ideology. Indeed 40 years ago nurses are passive workers in the hospital they depend too much on doctors order, they do not perform intravenous medication, insert Catheters, NGT, intubate, prescribe medicines and the list can go on and on. Nurses way back then are just fond of changing linens, assisting doctors in various procedures, draining urine bags, changing the patient’s gown.
However, nursing is not a stagnant profession they have realize that nurses are capable of doing advance medical procedures thus enters the time where nurses needs to acquire a license in order to practice the profession. But why do nurses need a license for? They just depend on doctors right? Not anymore! Nurses need a license because a nurse no longer just changing linens and drain urine bags they now administer medications, perform advance procedures and many more! License is the first step of liberty from the doctor, a license tells us that doctors and nurses have different roles and job description. It is just like Engineers and Architects they both have difference license and yet they are rendering their service on the same client, none of the two are superior to the other they have different roles and job description. In like manner doctors and nurses cooperate with each other to make an ill person better none of them are superior to the other. When a nurse commits a mistake it is not the doctor who will apprehend the nurse but it will be the nurse’s immediate superior his head nurse, at the same time when the doctors will commit a mistake it is not the nurse who will apprehend the doctor but the doctor’s immediate superior.
Nurses are carrying out doctors order, well that would suggest that doctors are still superior to nurses. Unfortunately that does not imply that doctors are superior to nurses in fact it even testifies that nurses are independent from doctors. A doctors order contains the management that will be performed on the client, when a nurse carries out a doctors order he is implementing the management independently. For instance if an order was made to infuse intravenous fluids to the client the nurse will immediately infuse I.V fluids which prompts the nurse to perform venoclysis if the nurse commits a mistake he is the one accountable for it (Remember the Lorenza Somera case in 1929?) not the doctor, it is his license at stake not the doctor’s.
The doctors job is to diagnose and treat the patient, the nurses job is to ensure that proper care is rendered by performing drug administration, simple and advance medical procedure that are essential to the recovery of the patient. Nurses have their own nursing diagnosis in which can be only be performed if the nurse made his nursing assessment. Thus, nurses do not solely depend on the doctor , nurses have their own function and contribution to hasten the recovery of the patient. There also advance studies and training for nurses in which it allows nurses to prescribed medication, order diagnostic tests and diagnose clients. Clearly, in the modern sense of nurse and doctor relationship nurses are independent while collaborating with the doctors.
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