Are Nurses the Stuart Smalley’s of Health Care Professionals?  Sometimes I think I may be the biggest Stuart Smalley nurse.  I love being a nurse and I am like a pit bull (sans lipstick) in defending the profession, to a fault.  I can be hypercritical of any media that is not 100% positive in it’s coverage of nurses.  I have been vicious in my criticism of that Nurse Jackie show (and I have only seen the trailer), and of many, many other stupid medical shows that portray nurses like dead-behind-the-eyes, dimwits.  I want constant validation, just like Stuart up there, that nursing is good enough.

Case in point.  I just read an interesting article in the New York Times about Cuban physicians flocking to the United States to work.  The gist of the story is how these highly educated Cuban doctors are struggling to find work here in the US.  In order to continue practicing medicine, they must learn English, pass the medical exams, and go through an American residency program.  This is a very tough hurdle for many of these docs to cross, so what do they do according to the NY Times?  They become factory workers, gas attendants, or……*Wait for it*……NURSES.

I am screaming silently in my head.  Help me Al Franken Stuart Smalley!

Yes I know this article was meant to be a heart warming piece of highly trained doctors trying to make it in the United States.  But, I just can’t get over the “feeling” of this article.  That a job in nursing is second best.  The last sentence of the article quoted one of these Cuban doctors who is now a hospice nurse (who makes over $100,000 a year, BTW).

“I’ve had to get used to think as a nurse, but it’s difficult,” he said. “Deep down, I’m still a doctor.”

And deep down, will you ever be good enough to be a nurse?

RR