Me Nurse Pretty One Day
Posted by realityrounds on June 25, 2009
“Hi. My name is Nurse Silicone. I will be your pretty, pretty nurse today. Let me start a teensy, weensy IV in your arm for your chemotherapy. M-kay? What’s that? You’re having chest pain? Let me read your cute little EKG with my long lashes and big blue eyes. Oh my! You are having a heart attack. Tee hee. I will just push you over to the cardiac cath lab in my size 2, tight, white polyester uniform, and my zero percent body fat. M-kay? Oh, now you are having trouble breathing. Let me listen to your lungs. Where is my stethoscope? Oh there it is, hiding in my cleavage. Feel better now?”
To try and help the nursing shortage in the Czech Republic, hospitals and clinics are offering “special perks” to lure nurses to work. Is it free continuing education? Monetary bonuses? Tuition for advanced degrees? No silly, it is breast implants and other assorted plastic surgeries. Apparently a tummy tuck here, and a face-lift there is much cheaper than, let’s say, raising the nurses annual salaries. It’s better to look good, than have a respectable wage, my dahlings.
One Czech nurse felt that good looking nurses help patients feel better and heal faster. That is how she justified accepting plastic surgery as a retention bonus. Could this be true? Do pretty, pretty nurses make you feel better? I have been a patient, and I really did not focus on how my nurse looked. I wanted him or her to be compassionate and knowledgeable. Sure, I did not want some foul smelling, Sasquatch coming at me, but a nurses’ over all appearance was not on my radar as a patient.
Let’s face lift it. Nurses have the most intimate health care role of all health care professionals. We get up close and personal with all areas of a patients body and function, and life, and death. Hopefully we are nursing a patient with compassion, empathy, knowledge and respect.
Do you care if we are nursing while looking our best?
RR
pinky said
I think if nurses looked too good that would make patients uncomfortable. I remember being a new nurse and having a young patient my age with a wonderful abdomen. I felt stupid every time I walked into his room. It was hard to speak to him when he was naked. I felt so bad because the poor guy was being diagnosed for some terrible Cancer! So I imagine it could work in reverse.
However, if they start offering plastic surgery at my hospital I think many of my coworkers would jump at a tummy tuck, breast redux, implants or face lift. We are a rather vain group at our hospital however, not at work. After having a few kids sometimes the body just never pops back as it should.
realityrounds said
But offering plastic surgery instead of a living wage? No way. As the NYT article pointed out, it’s like turning nurses into prostitutes.
Jill said
Oh no. That is the worst and most disrespectful stereotype. This quote from the article says it all:
“I feel better when I look in the mirror,” she added. “We were always taught that if a nurse is nice, intelligent, loves her work and looks attractive, then patients will recover faster.”
Would you like a feminist diatribe or should I just go grab a cup of coffee and start my day?
realityrounds said
Bring on the diatribe baby!
mamamia said
At my 1st mammogram, I had this gorgeous, hot(I know, not a nurse) young thing walk in and tell me to get naked from the waist up, let me tell ya, if it was any other situation I would have ripped the buttons off my heaving bodice. But being he was gonna squish my meager bosom flat as a pancake and manipulate them like never before, I would have gladly traded him in for a Sasquatch any day. He quickly put me at ease with his professional demeanor and and I forgot how hot he was(almost). Give me an experienced, calm, sympathetic person over a supermodel anyday.
Patients for a Moment #2 « DUNCAN CROSS said
[...] Rounds writes Me Nurse Pretty One Day, about the story that some Czech hospitals are offering free breast implants as a perk for their [...]