Word: wanted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...small but influential group of nurses has moved in a different direction. Convinced that specialization, elaborate new machines and close collaboration with doctors reduce nurses to "medical technicians," they want to return to traditional services, such as counseling, educating and comforting. In their view, hospitals are too bureaucratic to allow true nursing. Says Nurse Annette Swackhamer of New York City: "Doctors have the misconception that nursing is physical care." In fact, she says, the frenetic hospital milieu does not let nurses listen to a patient much or involve the family...
Last year a third of the graduating nurses received baccalaureate degrees. By 1985, the American Nurses' Association, the national professional organization of registered nurses, wants baccalaureate degrees to be a requirement for licensing of all "professional" nurses; those with diplomas or associate degrees would be designated "technical" nurses. But even the B.S.N. may eventually not be enough. The National League for Nursing, a coalition of nursing administrators, educators and other leaders, argues that a nurse practitioner should have a master's degree. Some nursing officials are urging nurses to get Ph.D.s if they want to move...
...letting them handle minor problems, if only to give physicians more time for more serious cases. Nurses often do this anyway, with doctors' encouragement. But the majority of physicians, including many of the new women M.D.s, still insist on complete control. As they like to say: "If nurses want to act as doctors, they should go to medical school...
Activist nurses contend that the real reason for this obstinance is that physicians want to hold on to their economic power. Many doctors admit that up to 80% of all office care given by pediatricians and family practitioners could be handled by competent nurses. Says Dr. Leon Oettinger Jr., a pediatrician in San Marino, Calif: "With its heavy reliance on physicians, the American medical system can be said to be using Cadillacs to do a tractor's job." That may not be the kindest analogy, but the Department of Health, Education and Welfare agrees with the basic analysis...
Three years ago, the Journal began selling space to individuals and interest groups that want to put their money ($1,500 a page) where their mouths are. Former HEW Secretary Joseph A. Califano Jr. held forth for seven pages (paid for by Xerox Corp.) on the economics of aging, and Jimmy Carter was given two pages (on the house) to explain how the U.S. health-care system "rewards spending and penalizes efficiency...