Are nurses subordinates to doctors?

[Etini]

I have a sister and friends who are nurses. From my observation, there is something like a cold war always going on between doctors and nurses. Doctors feel they have spent a longer time training for their qualifications and as such, nurses are supposed to directly take instructions and be subordinates to the doctors. Nurses on the other hand feel that surgery is the only part of the training the doctors got that the nurses don't have. As such, nurses deserve to be treated with some sort of respect by the nurses. This often leads to professional conflicts where this disparity exists.

In most hospitals, no matter how qualified or experienced a nurse is, he/ she can never be a medical director. In my opinion, all of them are part of a medical team that can't function well without each other. Their jobs are complementary and as such, they should not be any disparity on who is subordinate or who is superior.

 

[Ganibade]

Nurse are not subordinate to doctor, the duty of nurse is to assist doctor in the hospital.
They following doctor to the theatre to assist him to carry instruments they are using in the theatre for the operation.
When doctor is not around, nurses attend to patients by following the directions given by the doctor to render their service, such as treatment and dressing of the wounds and they describes drugs order by the doctor, and cleaning of the admission rooms and wards.
Most of the nurses take a delivery for the pregnancy women, in the hospital and take care of them in the maternity section.
This will make doctor to achieve and to work successfully in hospital.
In a standard hospital some nurses act as doctor when the doctor is not around, such nurses are performing like doctor in the hospital.
They can do everything that doctor is doing except operation.
Even some nurses established their own hospital when government give them accredited registration number to operate under the country law .

 

[eldavis]

I think the best way to describe this is that they are a body, and they need to work together to get the best results. Lets take the human body for example,
No matter how important the hand is or how much we make use of it, it can never replace the head and they cannot do without each other, nor can they change roles. The same goes for nurses and doctors. They play a very important roles to doctors and i feel they are ment to be helpers to them. Hence both needs to work together to achieve the desired result.

 

[Carpon]

I don't think there is a need for bringing in the word subordinate in this case and situation. If we are to face reality, then actually, the training a doctor has is more than that of a nurse and it is not just in the aspect of surgery. I also have a sister who is a nurse and I actually feel like their training is not as rigorous as that of medical doctors.

But this does not make nurses subordinates at all even though in the ranking, a doctor is higher than a nurse. And a nurse actually gets instructions from the doctor. But without the nurse, a doctor's job will be very tiring and without a doctor, the nursing job becomes complicated and literally impossible at some point.

So I think we need to agree that doctors undergo harsher and more rigorous training than nurses but that in no way places them above nurses as all have a very vital role to play and closely related roles!

 

[Heartstrings]

No,they are not,I don't think and expect a nurse to have such thought in the first place. A nurse is to assist the doctor,and register drug, injection to patient with the doctors instruction. I have been to hospitals and I have seen how it works over there,I also have someone who is a doctor and the other a nurse. Both has their fields and I think a doctor go through much alot. There are so many things and much more knowledge a doctor has which nurses don't.

There was a time I went to hospital but met the absence of the doctor,he actually travelled so a senior nurse was the one attending to patient. I wasn't comfortable with this so I left to return the next day. And it so happened that a patient came complaining to the doctor about the effect of the drugs given to him,which the doctor has to sort out. Despite the fact that nurses are experienced,you can never compare them to a doctor.

From what I have seen and heard,nurses are mainly the one taking deliveries, administer injection,and also help the doctor to make the work more easier.