Nursing Is Not Medicine, Research Paper Example

Introduction

Medical careers are very different from scientific, linguistic or business careers. While it is quite obvious how manager’s differs from accountant’s one, it is not that obvious when it comes to nurses and doctors. Both nurses and doctors take care of their patients and cure them. Both belong to National Health Service. But there are crucial differences that make nurses and doctors unequal to each other. These differences are essential and important; the choice between medicine and nursing does not come to how many years young students will learn the subject. And of course nursing and medicine are indivisible, though historically their interaction has changed.

Historical Background

Historically, doctors and nurses relationship was simple and understandable. Doctors were the ones that possessed knowledge essential for treating ill people; they learned how to perform this complicated work and thus were higher. Nurses were supposed to be caring, attentive, but not necessarily educated. Usually, nurses were women. They performed easy work in order to free their doctor’s hands and time – for example, they folded the linen. They did not cure patients; nurses were just nice to patients while they were getting better. In fact, the last occupation of nurses is their main occupation now (Radcliffe, 2000).

Stable hierarchy of superior doctors and governed nurses existed. Such interactions lasted for a long time, and it was not until the twentieth century when nurses became more involved in the treating process. Their usual secondary work changed. Nursing began its evolution when nurses appeared to have had initiative and responsibility – either for doctor’s recommendations, or for patient’s well-being (Radcliffe, 2000). Later, being a nurse drew closer to medicine. Nurses were no longer just looking after their patients and performing unskilled labor. They had experience, responsibilities and duties.

It comes without saying that nurses do meet the needs of doctors. But now they are able to do simple work that has been previously done by young doctors: ‘administering intravenous drugs, doing endoscopies, preoperative assessment, and some prescribing’ (Radcliffe, 2000). This is one side of the nursing that changed significantly over the years, and its importance for modern medical hierarchy cannot be denied.

Different Roles, Different Professions

It is common knowledge that medical professions are usually thought of as a conventional nuclear family, with doctor-father, nurse-mother and patient-child. Some people say that the patient has grown up and new partnership should replace the vanishing family (Kings Fund 2008). Really, with nurses doing work for doctors, the distinction between medicine and nursing has become blurred. Medicine role has always been considered to be diagnosis and cure, and nursing role – care.

Doctors are vital for normal life of the society. They can do the thing that no one else can do – they can make decisions and save people’s life. Final decision, diagnosis, analysis of the test results, operations, and drug prescription is a work of doctor. He or she decides which course to follow and how to deal with the disease. Doctors need to take risks and deal with uncertainty. To set a diagnosis doctor must have a wealth of knowledge concerning certain disease, organ, etc. But after setting the diagnosis and prescribing the medication, doctor usually switches to the next case and just traces the ill while he or she is going better.

But when the ill person is in clinic, the task of the personnel is not only to follow the physician’s course. People need support and care, and physician needs information about current patient’s condition. And this is the very thing that nurses do. Their primary goal of the nurses is to assist the ill patients in their recovery, so ‘the effectiveness of nursing is based not so much on what nurses do to patients, but on how they do it to them’ (King Fund 2008). Nurses look after people and make them not only get better, but also feel better, provide them with support and promote healthier lifestyle.

One of the nursing theories, Care, Core and Cure nursing theory, was developed by Lydia Eloise Hall (Nursing Theories, 2009). This theory reads that nurses can be defined in three separate spheres: ‘care (active bodily care), core (using self in relationship to the patient), and cure (applying medical knowledge)’ (Nursing Theories, 2009).

This nursing theory underlines the importance of professional nursing. In fact, nursing is a complex process. It includes close interaction with a patient, a continuous process of learning and teaching. The author of the theory emphasized that a certain single nurse must take care of one person, because when many different nurses share their duties it reminds of a trade, not a profession. Though cure, core and care are all functions of a nurse, all of them are her duties to a certain degree, and here nursing is tightly interwoven with medicine. For example, cure function is narrowed to helping patients and their families to deal with the measures prescribed by the physician. ‘The core circle is shared with social workers, psychologists, clergy, etc.’(Nursing Theories, 2009). And the key function of nursing was the care circle, and Hall also deemed it exclusive for nursing (Nursing Theories, 2009). Though the Cure, Core and Care theory was developed in 1960’s, it is clear that key elements of nursing have not changed nowadays. Caring function of nurses has been the most important one, and it is one of the main differences between nursing and medicine.

Nursing and Medicine Require Different Education

A book Professional Nursing: Concepts, Issues, and Challenges by John Daly et. al. (2005) covers a lot of aspects of nursing. One of them is theoretical knowledge of nurses that differ greatly from that of doctors. According to this book, the discipline of nursing is the knowledge base, namely nursing theories; professional nurses are guided in their practice by their knowledge base (Daly et. al., 2005). ‘The profession is “persons educated in the discipline according to nationally regulated, defined, and monitored standards set up to preserve health care safety for members of society” (Daly et. al., 2005).

Knowledge base of nursing is very broad. It includes disciplines that may not be useful for doctors; this includes social sciences, natural sciences, ethics, law, and medicine, as well as basic nursing knowledge. Specific knowledge like thorough understanding of acute and chronic conditions, administering medications, performing tests and procedures, operating medical machines (Daly et. al., 2005) are indispensable for every nurse. Doctors must not have that profound knowledge as their main function is to set diagnosis and make decisions. On the whole, doctors must provide a professional cure and treatment. Nurses must provide professional care. Exclusive nursing knowledge is essential for normal functioning of health care establishments.

It is absolutely clear that doctors require absolutely different basic knowledge. Anatomy, morbid anatomy, chemistry, pharmacology, biology and many other sciences are essential for doctors to understand all processes that occur in the body and that can cause diseases. Their education is concentrated on processes, conditions and profound knowledge of every single organ, be it skin or brain, dependent on the doctor’s field of expertise. Subjects like social science or ethics are interesting, but not vital for the physician, as he or she is supposed to cure, but not to care. Differences between nursing and medicine here are quite obvious, because cure and care here are key elements, as they influence the education and attitude of health care professionals.

Conclusion

The difference between doctors and nurses has always existed. The differences of authority, career opportunities, education, salary, social status, attitude, and gender cannot be ignored as they are inseparable part of medical role distribution. But every profession has its benefits and singularity.

Medicine is a field of experts, who know perfectly well how human body functions. It is inspiration based on deep knowledge. Doctors do main decisions, prescribe medication, explore tests results and set diagnosis. They bear the burden of responsibility; if something wrong happens to the patient the only guilty person will be his or her doctor in charge. The error of the physician can cost a life and thus the more complicated is the case, the more proficient doctor is needed. The main feature of the medicine is cure, treatment of diseases and responsibility for the course prescribed.

Nursing is usually perceived as a women’s profession. Nurses need to be compassionate, attentive, caring and educated, and women usually show more natural inclinations to all aforementioned features than men. Nurses gather information for doctors, take care of ill people, follow the prescriptions of doctor, support patients and their families, promote healthy lifestyle – they do everything to help patients to recover and feel better. The care is a key word of the nursing. Nurses are like instruments of doctors that choose the best approaches to the people and follow the most suitable courses.

Nursing is different from medicine. Doctors and nurses strive to one goal, to the well-being of the patients; doctors choose how to achieve it, and nurses help ill people to achieve it.

Works Cited

Daly, J., Speedy, S., Jackson, D., Lambert, V., Lambert, C. Professional Nursing: Concepts, Issues, andChallenges Springer, 2005.

Radcliffe, Mark. Doctors and nurses: new game, same result. British Medical Journal, 2000. Retrieved: June 1, 2009 from: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/320/7241/1085

Care, Core and Cure. Nursingtheory.net Retrieved June1, 2009 from http://www.nursingtheory.net/gt_carecorecure.html

King Fund 2008. Nursing and Medicine [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved June 1, 2009 from http://www.rcn.org.uk/__data/assets/powerpoint_doc/0012/199866/Ghislaine_Young_pp.ppt