Nursing still viewed as lowly work

As I was researching nursing life in other countries I turned up some disturbing facts. Countries such as India and Indonesia still view nurses as nothing more than hand maidens of doctors. Training is not comparable to North American standards (and I'm comparing here because this is where i was trained) and more highly educated nurses are not entirely welcome by upper management of hospitals. Letters to newspaper editors in these countries often state how poor people can not afford health care (in some instances must show up with own chemo drugs for treatment) and are treated coldly by nursing staff.
Here we are in 2007 and depending upon what country you are in women...nurses...are treated poorly, as is the profession overall. The profession has much work to do indeed, to increase government and overall understanding and respect for what we do, who we are.

If nursing were run like a business

I know I have mentioned in the past that part of the current problems with nursing and the health care system might be attributed to management treating health care more like a business. I was at first upset by having to refer to patients as clients and taking customer service courses. Now I think health care organizations may have better luck retaining nurses (and others) if they treated them as well as many larger retail chains treated their employees. I have spent a little time in the retail industry during these last 11 years of nursing and have been left impressed with how managers encourage sales associates to grow through performance incentives and employee discounts. The hours of work may be long, the days very busy, but I have always found more enjoyment in my work (in retail) because of these factors.

Poorly paid nursing faculty adds to nursing shortage

In researching the part of my book dealing with the question "is there really a nursing shortage" I found information regarding the pay scales for nursing faculty. Now, one of the reasons nursing schools turn away prospective students is because of lack of faculty. And it seems that this lack of faculty may have everything to do with poor pay. Most faculty members are prepared at the Masters level (at the very least), yet they are paid (in the USA) at 39% LESS than a Nurse Anesthetist.
Underpaying nurses for their skills and knowledge is, in my eyes,a show of disrespect for the profession.

Elections using nursing shortage as leverage

The "Saskatchewan Party" is using the nursing shortage in that province as an election promise. No new news here as political parties are almost always using health care as an election tool. Well for the last couple of years I have been trying to encourage nurses to speak out. I did today on the feedback page at CBC.ca

My advice to the political party was they were not likely to magically pull 800 nurses (that's what they were quoting) out of a hat with promises of money. We are more intelligent than that and what we require are governments with backbone who can address the real issues around the nursing shortage. One of those issues I told them was nursing management who would provide respectful workplaces for us. I for one have had enough of being treated like a second class citizen, using outdated equipment and even more outdated educational resources.