Professional Practice

One Step Forward, One Step Back

H ERE IN THE SOUTH, summers get very hot, so hot that sometimes it's hard to think straight.

Over the years, Southerners have learned about the adverse effects of hot weather on normal thought. This year, the heat has been made worse by drought. That is the best theory I have about why people are behaving so strangely. For example, just when I thought that television was trying to become a little more socially responsible--St. Elsewhere had at last come to an end - -new programs have popped up that portray nurses in even a poorer light than the canceled shows. Have the writers and producers of this garbage not heard that we are experiencing a shortage of nurses unlike any of the past? And what on earth has come over the folks at the AMA? It must be the heat and drought that has caused major synaptic dysfunction. I have no other explanation.

What has this got to do with professional nursing prac- tice? Quite a Iot, actually. The practice of nursing is com- plex, difficult, and demanding on its best days. Regardless of the type of practice, when we are spending long, tiring hours providing care, our work is only made harder by constantly explaining that nursing is not a series of ro- mantic encounters in the linen closet carried out between chemically impaired nurses and anyone available. Nor is one nurse simultaneously the vice president of nursing, the night charge nurse, the operating room scrub nurse, and the nursing professor, although at times we may feel like it. These television and movie portrayals show so little of

MICHAEL A. CARTEr., D N S c , R N , F A A N Professor and Dean University of Tennessee, Memphis College of Nursing 877 Madison Ave Memphis, TN 38163 © 1988 by W.B. Saunders Company. 8755-7223/88/0406-000353.00/0

the essence of nursing practice. While our patients and their family members know this, the problem is that young people contemplating future careers may not have the ability.to distinguish between the erroneous television image of nursing and reality. The result is that fewer young people select nursing as a career.

My first reaction to such grave misunderstandings about nursing practice by such influential people and organiza- tions is that somehow we have failed to convey an accurate and compelling picture of what we are about. I f we could just do a better job of educating this group, then we would not have this problem. But wait, nurses are not the problem here. We are the victims. Nursing need not be portrayed in such a negative manner to be interesting to the public. There are countless examples Of drama, in- trigue, love, adventure, and human poignancy every day in our professional practice.

Slowly, we begin to feel anger. Over time this anger turns to despair. Professional nursing practice is funda- mental to health care. Why do some important people continue to fail to recognize this? Why is there such persis- tence in the belief of myths and stereotypes? Is there any hope for a new tomorrow?

In the South, we have learned that when the weather turns sultry, we turn to iced tea to enhance our neurotrans- mitters. The tea leaves in the bottom of my glass reveal that the future is bright for nursing. The nature and scope of the issues facing nursing have captured the interest of public policy makers. Reasoned and innovative solutions are being discussed and put into place. True, some of the people who contend that they are our friends occasionally have a precipitous fall in their sensitivity titers, but with an appropriate challenge these will rise again.

Occasionally we will turn surly and growl, but the weather will cool and it will rain again. Then we can all get back to the work of moving this country's health care system into the 21st century. In the meantime, profes- sional nurses will continue to provide the exquisite nursing care that our patients need.

396 Journal of Professional Nursing, Vol 4, N o 6 (November -December ) , 1988: p 396