Nursing majors defend the profession and pursuit of facts: Meghan Wilda

   As a nursing student in CSON, I am offended by how Marye Moran describes the role of nurses in "Your nurse, the doctor." Nursing practice today includes SBAR, or "Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation."  We spend the most time of any healthcare professional with the patient and are the first to notice minute variations in the patient's baseline.  When something is abnormal we are the ones to call the doctor with the patient's situation and background and our assessments and recommendations for the patient's care.  Although Moran portrays us as having no knowledge of ailments, nursing is guided by evidenced-based practice derived from research and takes a high degree of technical skill, keen sense of observation, and true understanding of the patient's physical and psychological health.  We aren't nurses because we cannot be doctors and those of us who go on to get PhDs in nursing do so because we are interested in furthering nursing knowledge.  And by the way, when we have Ph.D.s, we are doctors.  Just the kind that focus on and care about the whole person, not only the disease.  The latter isn't a bad thing.  That's just not what medical doctors do. 

Meghan Wilda

CSON '13