Comments on Dr Rant: Journal of Nurse Quacktioner Madness (Volume 47, I...

Wonderful blog.

2007-11-05T09:19:00.000Z

Wonderful blog.

Please write anything else!

2007-11-05T08:46:00.000Z

Please write anything else!

Hello all!

2007-11-05T08:14:00.000Z

Hello all!

Good job!

2007-11-05T07:45:00.000Z

Good job!

Wonderful blog.

2007-11-05T07:17:00.000Z

Wonderful blog.

Good job!

2007-11-05T06:40:00.000Z

Good job!

Please write anything else!

2007-11-05T06:07:00.000Z

Please write anything else!

actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going t...

2007-11-05T04:16:00.000Z

actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.

Thanks to author.

2007-11-05T03:41:00.000Z

Thanks to author.

ugu2VH write more, thanks.

2007-11-04T08:37:00.000Z

ugu2VH write more, thanks.

Hello all!

2007-11-03T18:14:00.000Z

Hello all!

2007-11-03T17:26:00.000Z

Hello all!

Magnific!

2007-11-03T16:25:00.000Z

Magnific!

Hello all!

2007-11-03T15:23:00.000Z

Hello all!

Magnific!

2007-11-03T10:44:00.000Z

Magnific!

2007-11-02T21:13:00.000Z

Magnific!

Hello all!

2007-11-02T20:11:00.000Z

Hello all!

Good job!

2007-11-02T19:07:00.000Z

Good job!

Magnific!

2007-11-02T18:25:00.000Z

Magnific!

2wg1JG Hello all!

2007-11-02T17:35:00.000Z

2wg1JG Hello all!

ItSXU5 Very good blog! Thanks!

2007-11-02T15:36:00.000Z

ItSXU5 Very good blog! Thanks!

Re: Uniforms: No real historical facts as far as I...

2007-07-31T23:18:00.000+01:00

Re: Uniforms: No real historical facts as far as I know. The fact is much is lost in the mist of time when it comes to that. For example, the term "Staff Nurse" is practically unknown in it's origin. The best answer was that this was termed from the millitary direction of "Staff sergant" which would tie in with the original Florence Nightingale millitary hospital and th start of Nurse training. The uniform I would say almost certianly would seem like a principle of Nightingale (the well dressed woman nurse in a dress and apron- Not for me of course as a slightly podgy bloke in a dress would be more disturbing than comforting).

Today the nursing uniform varies. There are normaly white tunics worn for both gender of nurse. Some areas have staff nurses in blue (see end of post for more on that), while some critical care areas wear scrubs.
Generally, there is either yellow or buff eppauletts worn by Health care assistants, light blue by staff nurses, Navy by sister/charge nurse, Full navy tunic/trousers buy senior sister/charge nurse. Certainly my university home trust hospital encourages the above mentioned uniform to be worn on the grounds that it makes staff recognisable as nurses. They also consider it more presentable then scrubs in ward and critical care areas. I have only seen a few Doctors ever wear the white coat, and the majority of them were surgeons when they came to the ward direct from the operating theatre. The other two I recall were older so I imagine were from the days of the doctors always wearing white coats all the time. I was told by one that the white coat was seen to put a barrier between the patient so that was ditched, though not sure if thats true (personally I think it looks nice the white coat). One thing that annoys me is when you see private home care companies wearing the exact same tunic as qualified staff nurses walking around public areas (like supermakets). Except, guess who get reported in the media? You gessed right, the staff nurses!

As for your comment: I think your right with all you have said wandering odysseus. There is sometimes a penchant for Doctors and nurses to batten down the hatches and start trading insults. At the end of the day, our professions are not "Better" or "Worse". We have different knowledge and skills. Personally, I find the fact that a doctor would loose his/her job to be replaced by a nurse is an insult to both our jobs (as I would a staff nurse loosing to a HCA) Does that mean I hate HCA's? Of course not, they are the backbone, I would simply be defending my professional standing. To me, there will always be a grey area occasionally. To develop a nurses role so that an experianced nurse can do an extended role is certian tasks is logical enough. The knowledge, experiance and competance held will be good enough, it is hard in say that an extended trained nurse is any less competant in one proceedure if they have trained long and hard to get there, but all of us need to remember that the extended nurse role takes a lot of training, is done only by a small percentage of nurses and in the mainstay was designed to help both parties.

If a doctor is to loose their job, of course you'll be pissed. Anyone would and that is totally natural. I myself read a copy of Nursing standard last year which was bemoaning the increase in the HCA work into "Staff Nurse" territory.

There was only one place where the development into a full practitioner role ever went without too much protest and that was the Ambulance Qulaifed Ambulance Man (QAM) qualification to Paramedic (Bar a few alarmed A&E doc's). Of course there a) No body else used ambulances in the NHS and b) It was needed.
Any other profession will always be open season.

Isn’t bogging great, I knew I was tackling a contr...

2007-07-30T11:24:00.000+01:00

Isn’t bogging great, I knew I was tackling a controversial topic when I sent the e-mail to Dr Rant, this was of course the idea, a good general discussion and argument was expected and thoroughly enjoyed.

I was glad that the debate has evolved into much more than just ‘we hate nurses/we hate doctors’, because I genuinely feel that in most cases this isn’t the case.

A few more comments (to keep the fun going)

1 - Qualifications. I did not expect the issue of my qualifications to arise, but a good issue none the less. I put in all that I had, in general day-to-day life I would not use half of them, but it seemed to fit the rant.

2 - Pay. I had a reasonable understanding of the old nursing pay scale and rank system, but I must admit that I have not fully caught up with ‘agenda for change’.

On an aside, I have seen this abbreviated in official DoH literature as ‘A4C’!, if there was ever a more clear statement of the wish to ‘dumb-down’ the medical and nursing possessions look no further – bastards.

If I had realised that band 7 was shit money for the job it would certainly have been included in the rant.

However, this raises another issue. The pay-scale on the advert is about right for a year 2-3 SHO if you exclude unsocial hours on call. Now, given that this advert is (at least in my opinion) for a Plastics SHO job, and does not include on-call, does this mean that NPs expect to get paid more than Docs for doing the same job?

3 - Uniforms. I really expected more response from this! In several of the hospitals I have worked in, the nurse managers/ward managers did indeed ware black tunics, these look pretty scary on the ladies, but on the chaps they look exactly like an SS-Panzer Grenadier wrap. These scare the shit out of me, I wonder if this is good for patient’s relations. Answers on a postcard.

The clothing debate as a whole is one I have not seen tackled on Dr Rant, should Docs ware ties? Should Docs were uniforms? Does anybody know the historical precedent for uniformed nurses and suited +/- white coated Docs. An interesting topic.

Lets keep the debate raging. What is the most number of comments for a Dr. Rant entry?

Yours,

Mister Wandering Shrewd-Minded Odysseus, BSc (Hons) - Bachelor of Science (with Honours), MB - Bachelor of Medicine, BS - Bachelor of Surgery, PhD - Doctor of Philosophy, MRCS - Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, MAI - Martial Arts Instructor, CBQ – Champion Beer Quaffer, RCGP – Reasonably Competent Guitar Player, MM – Milk Monitor, Emeritus MTC – Member of the Tuffty Club, STTAB - Smarter than the Average Bear. Dogs Walked.

I've never seen MD BS after someone's name!!! Does...

2007-07-30T02:37:00.000+01:00

I've never seen MD BS after someone's name!!! Doesn't mean it doesn't happen though, I guess. Is anyone else familiar with this?

Like I said above, if you're a medical doctor it's neccesary to be Dr. Joe Bloggs MBBS PhD, rather than Dr. Joe Bloggs PhD, as otherwise there's no way of identifying that you are a clinician.

Lamest debate ever? You bet.

People who have an MD don't document their MBBS as...

2007-07-29T12:14:00.000+01:00

People who have an MD don't document their MBBS as the MD supercedes the MB, so they become MD BS

But PhDs do usually supercede the other degrees. If you have a PhD, you also have a basic degree which you no longer need to document unless you're an incorrigible narcissist.

I am of course referring to the documentation of one's name and qualifications on a daily basis. It's normal to document all qualifications on a CV, even if they've been superceded.