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EDITOR'S
NOTE
Ditch
the victim mentality
Stand up for yourself |
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January 25, 1999 I’m always curious about how books, television, and movies portray nurses and allied health professionals, mostly because I think those portrayals can reveal to us how society truly sees us. Anna Quindlen’s latest book, Black and Blue, portrays a registered nurse whose marriage becomes a nightmare from which she is forced to escape. Frances Benedetto and her 10-year-old son flee to Florida from New York. She takes a job as a home health aide because she has to live under an assumed name—and so cannot use her nursing license—and lives in fear of being found by her violent husband, a policeman. Sadly enough, that part of the story could happen to virtually anyone. But there’s a lot in the book that seems to speak specifically to the image of nursing. For example, Frances is explaining to a new-found friend how she decided to become a nurse. "I had this nun in eighth grade who wanted me to apply to this really good private school. She kept saying that she thought I had potential. Potential. I got to love the sound of that word. It sounds like somebody shot you out of a cannon. And then I talked to my parents about it, and my mother looked at the [school] brochure I brought home … And my mother just said, ‘Why?’ That’s all. It was like my whole life in one word. I went to the local parochial girls’ school and then I went to the local nursing school and then I got married and I guess I was just grateful for anything I could get." Then, Frances says that what finally made her decide to leave her husband was her son. She did it for him, not for herself, she said. "That’s why I left. I’m a nurse, you know, a Catholic girl, a mother, and the wife of a man who wanted to suck the soul out of me and put it in his pocket. I’m not real good at doing things for myself." Maybe Quindlen is on to something. I’m always hearing nurses say that we’re not very good at looking after our own needs, so oriented are we to looking out for others. Perhaps we subtly have been perpetuating that attitude over the years, even handing it down to new grads. I remember the first time a physician screamed at me—really lost it over the phone. I had done nothing wrong and was in fact just doing my job. I was furious. The other nurses on the unit laughed at me for being angry. They told me it happens all the time, and I should just blow it off. But instead, I wrote a letter to the chief of staff explaining what had happened. I remember saying that we were in the midst of a severe nursing shortage, and that if the medical staff couldn’t learn to treat nurses with common respect, they would end up having to take care of their patients themselves. I wanted a formal apology. I got it, and, in fact, the physician was reprimanded. For months it seemed the doctors were extra respectful to me and to the nurses with whom I worked. I felt victorious, not over the physician, but over the culture of victimhood, the sense that as nurses, there were certain attitudes and behaviors that we just had to expect and accept. Over the years, I’ve known many courageous nurses who have spoken out on all sorts of issues. And I’ve known others who felt they just couldn’t. But I’ve always felt our patients would be better off—as would we—if, as a profession, we practiced personal responsibility rather than perpetuate the victim mentality. If our culture, and thus our patients, sees nurses as victims, how can the public trust that we’ll be able to be effective as their advocates? What do you think? Barbara
Bronson Gray, MN, RN |
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