Common Filipino misconceptions about nurses

When people get hospitalized, they most likely would come across nurses wherever they are around the hospital. Given that nurses have direct relationships with the patients during hospital admission, attachments usually occur between them with a professional sense, ofcourse. It is therefore safe to say as a generalization that impressions and mindsets of patients are inevitable to come up toward nurses. Now the question is, are these conceptions true? or are they usually in line with what nurses really are or what they do? Let's take a look to some of the common misconceptions about nurses in the Philippines and their job. 

1. Nurses can make medical diagnoses

It is very common to hear people asking nurses about what disease they probably have due to some symptoms they feel. Filipinos are traditionally clingy to alternative medicine, that is, they try to look for home remedies to alleviate their illnesses and sickness as much as they can to avoid towering costs of hospitalization, medicines and doctors' fees. At some point where they couldn't already just brush it off with herbal medicines, they would turn to their neighbor or their relative who is a nurse to ask for a medical diagnosis. Unfortunately, nurses could only recommend what sort of doctor to see about the complaint but they can not diagnose. 

2. Nurses can prescribe drugs

If you try to ask nurses to name one that annoys them outside of work, it is their cousins, aunts and friends who ask them to prescribe medicines for complaints they are reluctant to bring to the doctors. Considerably, a mild headache or fever could be alleviated with paracetamol and at some point, nurses might dare to recommend taking it, but to ask them to prescribe a drug for gallstones or liver damage is already kilometers away from their scope. Again, it is repeatedly emphasized that nurses are not legally licensed to prescribe medicines. 

3. Nursing is a job intended for females only

When people hear "nurse", the gender that usually comes to their mind is a female. Perhaps, the history of nursing may have greatly influenced this belief since in the early times, nurses were all females and were along side war camps to care for the sick and wounded soldiers. However, times have changed, and the demand for male nurses have dramatically increased in specific areas such as the emergency and operating room. The bottom line of everything still goes back to the fact that nursing is merely a  calling, thus it chooses no gender or race. 

4. Nurses are doctors' assistants

No. No. I'm sure there would be a mutual agreement among nurses if I claim that our profession is independently noble, thus, most of our actions in the hospitals or in any other health care institutions are autonomous, although some may strictly require doctors' orders. Nurses have been seen doing chores that the doctors order them to do so, but that doesn't mean they are generally their secretaries or assistants. It would be appropriately correct to refer to it as a collaboration rather than subordination. 

5. Nursing is a dirty job

Okay. Maybe this conclusion resulted from people seeing nurses soaking their uniforms in patients' urine and feces, or personally witnessing how a nurse cleans up a corpse right after dying. But these are just superficial measures to automatically say that nursing is dirty. Perhaps, people should look more intimately to the real meaning of the nurses' filthy actions of cleaning up an immobile old woman's anus after a massive explosion or draining up the urine from a patient's urinary catheter bag. Besides, how could you call someone dirty when all they do is to make you won't look miserable even when you can't even brush your own teeth?

6. Nurses can only be found in the hospitals

Contrary to  the general public's knowledge, nurses can actually be found almost everywhere; schools, malls, factories, airports, companies, clinics, orphanages, home cares centers, community centers and hospitals. The emphasis however is given on the nurses who work in the hospitals as it is the easiest way to depict or paint ideas as they are commonly seen there. Each field however requires different disciplines of practice for nurses and thus, we could actually draw a positive connotation from this, it is that nurses are indeed flexible. 

These are only some of the worst yet humorous Filipino misconceptions about nurses, and the list still goes on. It is essential that the people be informed of the truth, for some impressions last if they remain undisputed.

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