The more I read the more I realize that patients are pissed off about the state of health care in the United States.  It is universal across ages and specialties.  It is not just OB, or Women’s and Children’s Health,  or personal health that I am talking about.  It is a pandemic feeling of angst and violation, and mistrust, and dare I say it, hatred for the state of health care.  Terms such as “criminal” and “rape”, and “abuse” are floating around the internet regarding how some American human beings are feeling about how the health care industry has treated them.  Here is a quote from a comment left on the website Stand and Deliver.  The commentor is specifically talking about nursing advocacy in regards to labor and delivery, but you can substitute her comment for any medical specialty:

Gloria J. Lemay said…

When nurses REALLY begin to advocate for the patient, things will change fast. We won’t see any more Cytotec or other prostaglandins used for one thing. We won’t see any more 41 week inductions for low amniotic fluid for another. Nurses know darn well that these things are harmful and go along with them because “I’ll lose my job”, “I want to pick my battles”, “It’s our protocol” or other rationalizations. Every time they go along with a harmful procedure that a doctor orders, they are part of the problem. Don’t even get me started on the nurses role in infant circumcision.

Is Gloria right?  Are nurses just lemmings going along with the medical flow, saying “yes, doctor’ to this and “yes, doctor” to that?  Are nurses cowards?………

I am going to leave this open for response.  I will follow with a more scholarly response on what it REALLY means for a nurse to advocate for a patient in post #2.

RR