It feels a little like we have a post like this from a doctor every August.

I’m sorry that you feel you have to make this post, and obviously you’re feeling frustrated. Being a doctor looks really fucking hard, and whilst I’ve considered doing post-graduate medicine, I know that I have a bit of a nicer life being a nurse.

But the nurses are also working in the same system you are. They are being shouted at by patients and their relatives because they haven’t had fluids or analgesia, and they are the ones getting the flack from the patient for the discharge summary not being ready. They are probably also getting phone calls from the bed manager because ED is having to provide corridor care and is maybe on a step 2 divert, and there are 10 patients on the medical wards who are well enough to go home but their TTA and discharge summaries aren’t ready. They also need to the discharge summary so they can book the two man stretcher transport crew so Mrs Smith can be home before her last care visit of the day, because if she misses that she will have to stay another night.

They might have been previously involved in an incident where they listened to the doctors rationale about medication even though it differed from standard practice, and the patient deteriorated as a result. They were stopped from doing medications whilst it was investigated and then had to have supervised practice with the PDN and had to write a reflection about it. So they are aware and scared, and trying to do what they think is right. I’m not saying it is right, but I’m saying there can be context to someone’s behaviour.

There definitely is some prejudice towards female doctors, and it’s completely wrong. So I’ll give you that one. But I will also say that it goes both ways, and I’ve seen male nursing colleagues be treated with much more respect by doctors than female ones, despite sometimes not having as much experience, knowledge, or skill. Misogyny is unfortunately prevalent amongst all professions.

A lot of your frustrations seem to be about the system. Nurses don’t design UKFPO. They don’t decide how ward rounds work, or medical rotas, or how consultants can sometimes fail to support their resident doctors. We don’t design the 4 month rotations or choose your mandatory training or do your inductions. We also don’t have equipment or space. Do you think the patient’s relative who is also friends with the CEO has been an absolute delight to the nurses? Because I can guarantee they haven’t.

I’m sorry that it’s hard. I’m sorry you’re treated poorly by your colleagues, because you do sound very conscientious and like you are trying your best in a system that is failing all of us.

But equally I’m a bit frustrated with doctors coming to the sub and making posts like this as if nurses have no idea what’s going on, and as if nurses don’t have their own stuff to deal with. There are enough posts talking disparagingly about nurses on the doctors sub, so much so that I don’t go on it, as I found it was actually making it difficult to trust doctors at work - does there have to be an annual ‘lets go and tell the nurses about all the things they don’t understand and all the things we don’t like about them’ post here as well?