“Just a ______”

Called in by a desperate coworker as an IV-starting-pinch-hitter, I became involved in a conversation with a patient’s family that I have had many times before.

“Wow! You’re really good at that! No one can ever get his veins, you’ve got the touch!” exclaimed his wife. 
“Well, I watched the video three times before coming in here,” I joked. 

I knew where this convo was headed.  

Wait for it…

“Have you ever considered becoming a doctor? Or do you think you’ll stay just a nurse?”

And, there it was: that good ol’ #dismissiveAF “just a ___” comment. 

I sighed. “Nope. I actually love my job. I wouldn’t want to be a doctor—my golf game is terrible, for one thing.” 

Humor, always my self-deflecting shield. 

I left the room, heading back to the nurses’ station to check if some stat labs had returned yet.  (Sometimes the lab neglected to call, but there was a certain way to refresh the computer screen and bypass waiting on endless hold to retrieve them via report. Most of the nurses in the unit knew this, but not the doctors.)

I scanned the unit. I know that if this point was made to me multiple times a week—this “just a-” insinuation—it was surely made to our rockstar CNAs, our compassionate patient care techs, our super-speedy EKG techs, to name a few.  Unless you’ve reached the purported top of the medical food chain as an apex doctor, you would, at one time or 100 others, be questioned about your career aspirations. 

And it’s not as if these assumptive allegations are exactly untrue either. That’s the thing. 

If you give a nurse a cookie…

Admittedly, I began my foray into medicine working as a medical assistant. And I loved that job, while I had it. Working in a geriatric internal medicine office in a smallish town, it was kind of nice to be medicine-adjacent. I clocked out at precisely 5:00 pm every day, leaving every single professional worry back at my desk. Work and home life remained deliciously separate. But when it became clear that medicine was a path that I would likely be on for the length of my working life, I knew that I wanted to make more than minimum wage.

I can confidently assert that roughly half of my bedside nurse co-workers in our 120 bed ED were currently in school in an effort to add more letters behind their surname while I was there. Nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, medical aestheticians, physician assistants…those were the most obvious choices.  Just as many more than that were taking classes to convert their undergrad degrees from ADNs to BSNs.  

The message being: the more letters, the better.

Once again, when I think back to my early days in medicine, I come to this memory: the first time I clocked out at the end of my first day at my first hospital job. I easily wore my stethoscope for another hour that evening after leaving as a badge of honor, not even removing it when I ran into CVS for toilet paper. After slogging through two years of nursing school (while also working a full time job), I was so proud to be finally—gainfully—employed as a nurse. 

I think I made it a week before I realized that my ADN degree was considered “less than.”  

What a bummer. 

If all those nurses jump off a bridge…

Coming from a family of Harvard-educated MDs, as well as gobs of Ivy League alumni, I sometimes wonder why my aspirations weren’t aimed more towards (over)achievement. I think for the most part, I sought to become Just a Nurse. And when I did become one? I (gasp) LIKED it.  

So, as the cool kids say, one more time for the people in the back. I chose this. Not because I couldn’t get into medical school, not because I couldn't make it through O-Chem, not because I couldn't stomach $100k+ in student loan debt. I simply didn't want to be a doctor. And that’s because I wanted to be a nurse. 

I crave authentic connection with people, and nursing allows you an easy in for that. I love joking with grandmas about poop, kids about boogers, and young people about their fear of getting blood drawn (from their heavily tattooed arms). As we often joked in the ED, I’d rather wipe a poor man’s ass than kiss a rich man’s, and nursing allows for this in-between role to play out beautifully. 

Nursing was not a Plan B for me. Nursing was always my Plan A. 

Of course, my time working in the ED was not, of course, all hand-holding and shoulder-to-cry-on-ing. It was a lot of workplace drama, bureaucracy, and frustration brought on by upper management. But, despite all of this, I loved being part of a health care team. And more specifically, I loved being the nursing part of these complex teams. 

I always get a kick out of a story my mom likes to tell.  It goes back to when she started her gig as Chief Resident, working the labor floor in a major Bostonian hospital. The first piece of advice she got (and continues to give)? Don’t f*ck with the nurses. 

Later, I saw this interpersonal role between doctors and nurses come to life for myself.

For the most part, I am not the recipient of condescending or patronizing behavior (apart from a few spectacular departures from this, which have almost been worth enduring for the humor they provided at such an offending doc’s expense). And that’s because I take my role very, very seriously. 

I act professionally because I am a professional. 

I AM —not just—A NURSE.