Monday, February 23, 2009

Are you a Doctor "Doctor" or a Doctor "Nurse"?

The article New Degree Creates Doctor Nurses — And Confusion is quite intriguing! Imagine, a nurse who has a high level of expertise in nursing and has already earned a PhD could finally be called a "doctor". Well people with PhD's are really called doctor for their title but when you are in the hospital setting, when you think of the word doctor it is usually the person who diagnose and treat the disease and had graduated from the School of Medicine and not the School of Nursing.

But if you ask me, the title of doctor should be given solely to the doctors of medicine rather than the doctors of nursing. Why? Well sure some nurses with advanced degrees can diagnose and prescribe medicine but it is true that this would cause some confusion. But if you think of it people shouldn't really make a big fuss out of it. It is true that the real reason behind this dilemma is that egos of MD's are being deflated. The title of doctor had normally came with superiority but this is already in the past because doctors are not better than nurses and nurses are not the assistants of doctors. Nurses are part of the health care team as equal members who collaborate to provide efficient and holistic care.

But if doctors are preventing nurses from obtaining the title of doctor then nurses should also fight for the title of nurse. When you give the title nurse, this should only be given to those with Bachelors of Science in Nursing (and maybe to those with LPN/LVN) but not to the caregivers or nurse assistants. But this is only for the sake of ego and a sense of accomplishment... but in the end these doesn't matter at all.

The patient wouldn't care if you had a PhD or whatever as long as you help them feel better.



No comments:

Post a Comment