Culpeper cardiologist accused of striking hospital nursing director | News | dailyprogress.com

A Culpeper cardiologist faces a misdemeanor assault and battery charge stemming from a reported confrontation with a female nursing director inside Novant Health UVa Health System Culpeper Medical CenterSource: Culpeper cardiologist accused of striking hospital nursing director | News | dailyprogress.comHi Doc! I hope you get fired. And fined. Props to the nurse admin who pressed charges. I'M WITH HER.I trained at this rural community hospital. It was not an extraordinarily hostile environment. In my limited experience it was probably a 4/10 on the pain scale of abuses nurses suffered at work. Still, I'm not surprised by this repulsive development. Workplace violence, mostly verbal, is a reality of hospital work. At UVa Culpeper there was almost no interaction between MDs and RNs. The general view of nursing was that this was a group of low class, poorly educated, lazy to the point of obstructionist women. A recipe for disaster.Nursing should be a force to be reckoned with, different but equal to medicine. Respect and autonomy are harder to come by in community hospitals--but this is a battle worth fighting. It should be noted that difference between community hospitals with minimal nurse autonomy and governance and large academic medical centers, particularly Magnet organizations, is massive. Wherever they are, nurses must be empowered as professionals to participate in advancement of their own practice. We have an important job and we have to be nailing it: know the orders, read the notes, understand the clinical picture (plan even!), be engaged enough to know the why of every drug and intervention. Be twice as good as the doc. You know what I'm saying. Do it backwards in high heels.I see two practices for improving our situation as a historically subordinate profession: 1.) (Dare I say it?) We are stronger together. Active nurse governance at your hospital. Sit on committees. Insist on getting paid for this time, because this is not the PTA and we are not volunteering. THIS IS A PROFESSION. 2.) Get to know each other. Inter-professional education has shown anecdotal promise, even if the studies aren't strong. Hospital administrators, you can facilitate this at non-teaching hospitals. If you work at a teaching hospital you've got the advantage of working with baby docs. Share your experience, and they will often share their shiny new medical knowledge. Either way, just talk to people. Regardless of their credentials they are in fact people. Here are some topics of discussion to get you started: kids, dogs, mortgages, food, car repairs, patients. It's hard to hate (or hit) someone whose humanity you recognize.