Bedside Nursing as Menial and Demeaning

“Despite years of education and rhetoric, nurses aren’t really permitted to practice to the full scope of our knowledge.”   This is a quote from from “Bedside Nursing as Menial and Demeaning” by torontoemergencyRN   (just substitute RT in that sentence)

“If people around you all day tell you you’re worthless and menial, and if you view what you do as being more or less thankless and trivial, pretty soon you’re going to believe you are worthless and menial — and so is your professional practice.”

I understand this completely and it is completely true.  Just as nurses are told that the hospital is there for them,   in Respiratory school we are told we are a very important member of the healthcare team but many times we are treated  as if we are not. We are viewed as not important and just treatment jockeys until someone codes or a rapid response is called on them or we are needed to monitor a patient on a conscious sedation or to set up a balloon pump.   We do have critical thinking skills and we are professionals.  We also have educations and licenses.  Possibly an associate degree and maybe a bachelors degree.  We understand medical diagnosis and have taken pathophysiology.  We do have critical thinking and assessment skills. We are also demeaned and treated as if we are worthless. worthless.  Shit rolls down hill and we are at the bottom of that hill many times.  We take abuse from doctors as well and we take it from nurses as well.

I am tired of the we/they mentality of the health care.  We are all supposed to work together for the well being of the patients we serve.  Much of the time I feel that we do not do that based on our expectations of each other.   If you ask for our opinion do not discount it.  It’s very frustrating when this happens.

I am often asked why I want to leave RT (especially by nurses) who view our job as easy.   The reasons I want to get out of Respiratory are simple:

1.  We are not afforded any dignity in our practice.  I do not feel respected much of the time.  If I nurse says give a treatment to a patient we have to give it or face write ups and complaints regardless if our assessment says it’s not indicated.  Often we are not listened to, our opinions not valued.  We are not important until someone needs a nasal cannula put on or a bubbler put on that cannula or someone codes.  We are a huge part of why patients are saved from coding. We often call the rapid responses because we see something wrong.  We do not appreciate being told that the patients ET tube was loose for the last half hour but received no call until the tube is nearly falling out.  (guess who gets blamed for that one?)

2.  We our value is not recognized by our institutions  like other disciplines.  It is up to our department manager to recognize us for respiratory care week.  All other disciplines are recognized with banners in the cafe and poster boards and emails. We are like the red headed step children in the hospital.  (I know that this is not true in ALL hospitals)

3.  No autonomy. We are given no protocols to operate under regarding starting or discontinuing nebulizers or conversions to MDI’s, changing modalities or managing ventilators.  It’s as if we have no critical thinking skills and can not handle working within a guideline.  We are trained and we have critical thinking skills.  We very much dislike it when others on the team make changes to said ventilators without documentation and when something goes wrong with the patient guess who gets blamed? We have licenses and are responsible for said things.  I know that this is not true of all hospitals.

4.  I want to feel at the end of the day that I have actually helped someone.  Often I do not feel this way because of the volume of work we are asked to do in the 12 hours we are there.  We see frequently 15-20 patients , usually 2-3 times a day and I have had up to 11 ventilators to “manage”.     We do not sit in our department and wait for nursing calls.  We are usually pretty busy especially in the winter.  If we are working in the ER we are usually getting our asses handed to us on  a piece of ply wood,  (not even a silver platter, lol), giving sometimes unnecessary treatments to people who have no business using the being in the emergency room.  We do understand that a nurse views her patient as top priority, but often  we also have to prioritize our care.   We know that we are not often told the truth of a situation.  We get calls that a patient is wheezing up a storm and when we arrive there is no wheezing and the patient is clear.  Or that a patient is in respiratory distress and when I arrive in the room the patient is talking a blue streak on the telephone.  Clearly not an emergency.  All of these things take us away from the patients who really need us.  We have so much to do that we can’t spend significant time with any one patient.  I believe that patients LOS might be reduced if we were left to do what we do best, protocols were instituted  and unnecessary treatments were eliminated.  I often wish we were utilized differently but that is the way it is.  But I don’t have to accept it.

I know, from reading other nursing blogs in addition to the above mentioned, that the grass isn’t greener on the nursing side of the fence.  I do feel however that there is power in numbers and I think that nurses received MORE support than RT’s do. They are valued more because a hospital couldn’t function without them.  I want to go to work and feel like a valuable member of the team.  The longer I am in nursing school the more I respect nurses and what they do. I vow not to be the nurses I describe in this post.

Too many years of the above, crying when I come home from work from the frustration of  feeling of not being respected or not feeling effective and job dissatisfaction all have prompted this. change