For the Docs (especially the junior docs: we like them better)

Just a few quick thoughts.

This blog was started so I could blow off steam. It is entirely nurse-centric. Nursing is all I really know.

I am always complaining about how tough nursing is right now. It's because I want things to get better. This does not mean that I do not understand how bad things are for other health care professionals. I am talking about the doctors mainly. Junior doctors especially. Consultants are just a mystery. I just try and avoid consultants 100%.

From what I can see it looks as if junior doctors are actually going through living hell. We do feel bad for them. We feel bad when we can't help them out. We feel bad when we have to keep bleeping them for stupid shit. But yeah, we have too. We feel bad when we find out something about a patient that needs a doctor review 8 hours into my shift rather than 2 hours ago when the doctor was actually on the ward. Now he/she has to come back here AGAIN when many other wards are trying to get him/her to see their patients. We haven't bleeped you 3 times an hour to be a bitch or make things harder for you. We are just constantly missing things because we have no time to read notes and assess people properly. It's bad. Honestly, we don't want to fuck up your orders or land you or ourselves in hot water.

We know that you had to be highly intelligent just to get into med school and that you have an extremely high IQ. We know this even if you just asked a silly question. We know that your hours are shit compared to ours. We know that you have more patients and are constantly dealing with acute stuff.

We actually worry about the junior docs...and take cash bets on which ones are going to keel over and die from stress before age 35. We get pissed off when we see consultants talking down to their juniors and yelling at them in front of everyone.

We think that it is a damn shame that you can't get anything done without that bleep going off. I would have thrown the fucking thing out the window. Obviously we respect the job you do. Even so, I am still going to run in the other direction and not make eye contact when you walk onto the ward. That's probably because I haven't yet been able to implement those orders you gave me over an hour ago. Yeah oops.


There is always going to be some nurses that hate doctors and give them a hard time. My experience is that the majority of us are not like this. The majority of us do not want to do your job either. No thanks. I really wanted to be a nurse, despite all the shit (literally and otherwise). I like the idea of nursing people, NOT spending my days diagnosing and prescribing. That doesn't sound like any fun to me. But that is just me. More power to those of you who choose to go down that road.


But the whole point of this blog is to explain things from the nurse's point of view, that's all.