"...But The Other Nurse Said...."

I'm not sure if it's a polite, Midwestern trait, or if people visiting the Emergency Department just don't pay attention to identification badges. I grant you, we Midwesterners are raised to be excruciatingly polite, and taking more than a passing glance at a name tag could conceivably be construed as an invasion of privacy in our minds.

If someone doesn't introduce him- or herself, perhaps it's none of our business. Or, if we learn someone's name once, and subsequently forget it... then we're rude. We're a strange breed here, no doubt.

So, on basically every occasion when I volunteer in the Emergency Department at the local mega-hospital, I am mistaken for a nurse. Patients and their loved ones often solicit advice, and preface their queries with things like, "Well, the other nurse said," or "Nurse, could you please tell me if."

There is a strange attraction to being mistaken for a nurse - it feeds some bizarre ego thing, deep in my id. I am absolutely not a nurse, obviously, so the ego rush is completely false and pointless. The first time it happened, I was half-tempted to allow the illusion to continue, to play along... and then I realized how utterly insane that would be. Insane, and dangerous.

There is a concept within the health profession called "scope of practice." One of the more concise definitions of this term is from the Texas Department of State Health Services, which explains it thusly: "The level of medical responsibility and/or health services a practitioner is legally authorized to offer to the public."

As a volunteer, the level of medical responsibility and/or services I am legally authorized to provide is ZERO. I can neither offer any opinion nor give any medical advice, and rightly so; I don't know anything! I have no training!

What was it about being mistaken for a medical professional that appealed to me? Perhaps it was just a brief glimpse into the world where I will, with luck, someday exist. Maybe it was some kind of external validation - if this person sees me as a possible nurse, then maybe it's not so far away after all. Maybe I am just bat-crap crazy.

There are so many opportunities to utterly screw up in this profession I'm going to take up, and I hope my awareness of them continues to expand. I hope I don't fall into any traps along the way, being lured into doing something for which I am not qualified.

I have a really great blog to link for you this week, but it does come with a warning for bad language - if you're not a grown-up who can take a frustrated doctor's occasional cussing, please do not follow this link. If you can handle adult language, and are interested in a behind-the-scenes look at an Emergency Department doctor's crazy world... please go ahead and Figent Figary's LiveJournal. She's funny, she's brilliant, and she reflects the kind of medical professional I want to be someday; compassionate, thorough, kind-hearted. I just love her.