TED finally talks about nurses

TEDMED, a division of TEDTALKS that focuses on the kinds of things nurses think about and deal with every day at work, recently featured their first nurse speaker, Sally Okun. The vice president of patient advocacy, policy and patient safety for PatientsLikeMe, Okun used the platform to talk about how nurses can and should play a bigger role in healthcare. Brittney from The Nerdy Nurse reflected on Okun’s speech in a recent blog post of her own, writing:

It seems so often that nurses are often pigeon-holed and put into tiny little boxes. We are expected to stay put, do as we are told, and just be content with being good little nurses. We do what others don’t want to do. We get new opportunities to increase our skillset only when it’s cost-effective or is so commonplace that it is deemed as routine. (You don’t see many physicians giving injections these days.)

Nurses aren’t meant to be forward-thinking and innovative thinkers. We’re simply the handmaidens of the doctors we serve. We’re to only speak when spoken to and leap out of chair and offer it to any physician that might walk by. Right? Hah.

The simple truth is that nurses could play a much bigger role in healthcare. Nurses and nurse practitioners have limitations on how they can practice that should really be reexamined.

Some of the regulations on nurse practitioners are really quite absurd. Did you now that they cannot pronounce a patient dead? I know they didn’t go to med school, but I’m pretty sure a blind sailor could pronounce somebody dead. That doesn’t require nearly the amount of skill that the powers that be would have you believe.

To read the rest of Brittney’s thoughts, head on over to The Nerdy Nurse. And be sure to leave your reflections in the comments below!

Source: Med City News