So we're hoping that one of the senators come from nursing sector in the near future.

NCLEX Review Nonoy

Nursing is not being taken seriouly because there has been and still is too much unrest in nursing. Nuring is very disorganized. There too much selfishness and going off on tangents and this comes across very clearly. Look at the state nursing is in now with job loss and how that was done, look at what happened to wages. The "real nurses" the bedside nurses are looked down up by the management which is evident in the way bedside nurses are treated. Nursing says it cares about "quality" patient care, yet it has gone out of it's way to hire only nurses with few years experience because they will take the lowest wages. The public is aware of this. This was said to me in a room at unemployemnt this year by a room full of out of work general laborers and if they know it , the rest of the US knows it. Now, who is going to take nurses seriously with this going on. Nursing comes off as a buch of women planning a wedding. Disorganized and bickering, and all wanting their own way. One slapping down the other, my way or the highway- attitude not professional at all.

I agree with oldtiredRN in part. I believe that bedside nurses really just consider thier profession just a job. They go to work to earn pay check without worrying about the leadership side of things. I think that most bedside nurses, like myself, feel very disconnected from the nursing leadership in their own hospital. Management seems to work independently of the staff. For this reason, nurses do not take part in leadership roles or iniatives. They have no outlet even though they may be interested. I think that higher education may be the only way that nurses find out how to get involved in nursing leadership and the goal to make nurses an equsal partner in the healthcare process.

Higher education is nice but it's not free- show me the money to pay for it.

I don't think healthcare freform shoukld be made as complicated as it has been. It just gave alot of somebodies who have no comprehension as to what goes into taking care of patients, alot of time to waste flapping their jaws- lawmakers and lawyers. The true nitty gritty of health care they don't get- obvious from Sen John Cains questions to kathleen Seeulous at the Senate hearing on health care reform. But as soon as some one mentioned commerse- all of a sudden as dead room was resurected. Looking at alot of thoese Senators- age wise, I would have loved to ask 1 question- how many of your senators have HTN, had MI's or have diabetes raise your hands. Congratulations all you have pre existing conditions!! No health care for you.

It is my understanding that under the new Obama care provision, that preexisting conditions cannot disqualify you from being covered. Its an interesting concept. Just get insurance once somethig breaks. Now, I have yet to decide whether or not this is a great idea (Obama care) but it is a step towards change for our patients.

I am a manager in a nursing unit and value my staff very much. I don't know that it's fair to say that management works independently of staff in general. Many nursing managers care a lot about their staff. I want to point out that I have been trying very hard for a few years to teach my nurses about health care trends and health care reform and how it affects them, and not many of them are interested. Most of my staff feels that the only thing they want to concentrate on is the quality of care they give. And I applaud that. However, the budget, health care policy, health care reform, all of that affects and will continue to affect the quality of care that we can give as nurses. I also took an informal survey of how much my staff knows about health care reform and health care trends and most of them know very little if anything. So when politicians say they are speaking for the public, who are they really speaking for? If our own people in health care don't know what's really in the Health Care Reform Law, how much do you think the public knows? There are three million of us nurses, if we got behind an aspect of the law that we liked or that we didn't like, we could make quite a statement. But we can't do that until we learn what it's all about.

Originally Posted by oldntiredRN

Higher education is nice but it's not free- show me the money to pay for it.

Currently, I hold a staff position so it could be said that I am a bedside nurse. In 42 years I have never gone to work thinking that it was only for a paycheck.