Nurses Aren't Competent To Make Resuscitation Decisions
Nurses Aren't
Competent To Make Resuscitation Decisions
Vernon Coleman
I was appalled to hear that nurses are to be allowed to
decide which patients should - or should not - be resuscitated.
This is
terrifying news that should frighten the life out of every patient, every
relative and every potential patient - and that means all of us.
I have
two objections.
First, nurses simply don't have the training to make this
sort of decision. Nurses should stick to making beds and reading thermometers
and caring for patients, and they should stop trying to turn themselves into
fake doctors. The horrifying incidence of superbugs in British hospitals proves
without a doubt that nurses aren't doing their present jobs
properly.
Nurses have become lazy. It is their responsibility to make
sure that hospitals are kept spotlessly clean and that patients with dangerous
infections are barrier nursed. But nurses consider themselves too important to
deal with practical issues. They prefer to sit around having meetings with
social workers. Judging by the size of the average nurse most spend too much
time sitting down eating chocolates.
Second, nurses are (or should be)
too close to their patients to make this sort of decision. If they do their jobs
properly nurses should develop relationships with the patients they care for.
Sometimes they will like their patients. Sometimes they won't like them. And you
can't make good, clinical decisions when you have an emotional relationship with
a patient. Nurses will either have to hold back from real contact with their
patients (in which case they will be failing them) or they will get to know them
and then decide whether they live or die (in which case they will fail them
because they won't be able to make the right decision).
The nursing
profession has gone rapidly down hill since nurses decided that simply `nursing'
patients wasn't enough for them.
The modern nurse seems to be ashamed to
be a nurse; she wants to be a clinical professional. She wants to behave like a
doctor.
The answer to this is simple.
Nurses who want to pretend
that they are doctors should train and become doctors.
And that, of
course, is the problem.
The vast majority of nurses are, quite simply,
incapable of completing a medical degree course.
