Saturday, April 20, 2013

This is where nurses and doctors differ

Tamara Schalken, chair of the hospital nursing advisory board at Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis, recently presented at TEDx in Nijmegen.  In eight cogent minutes, she explained the difference in skills and perspective between a great physician specialist and a super nurse.  Watch it here.  If you can't see the video, click here.

2 comments:

anne llewellyn said...

Great video and explanation of the difference and the important role we play as a critical member of the team.

Anonymous said...

Con't

This is not to disparage or downplay the importance of nursing.

A good nurse needs to be a generalist, to be familiar with a wide variety of patients and understand their treatment plans.

Nurses do play a critical role in healthcare, particularly in providing the last line of defense in protecting patients from medical error. Not to mention their role as the physician's eyes and ears on the floor.

They're generally treated as disposable widgets by the healthcare system to be used until they wear out then replaced.

That said, I stand by my previous comments about the war on doctors and the inappropriate elevation of midlevels.

Dr Duh