This blog has hit on an age old sterotype that has some historical base which the media has perpetrated and nurses have struggled against. We are indeed seen as either mindless, thoughtless, ignorant, stupid (take your pick of descriptors)individuals that cannot think for ourselves and who need to be told what to do by doctors or we are indeed “rapacious, sex-crazed fiends who either are looking to marry a doctor or simply have an affair with one.

While just like any other grouping of human beings be that anthropologists, teachers, or zookeepers (not to offend any of these)…you could find people who fit the description of either stupid or sex-crazed. Therefore, to apply it just to nurses, is definitively unfounded, but none the less, part of our reputation.

Since this is a blog…I guess all I can do is vent that I find this just as frustrating and disgusting as other do. I am shocked by the last entry that described a training for interns on what to do about nurses that make passes at them, yet nothing to help nurses handle sexual harrassment…my gawd, if I were a nurse at that facility I would be outraged.

On a personal level, I conduct myself in a professional manner both in the clinical setting and in the community. I realize that people in the community who have seen me in the hospital setting have a certain expectation of me, therefore, I must conduct myself accordingly. My behavior in the community setting must reflect the image I desire the public to have of nurses. I do not tolerate sexual inappropriate behavior from patients, visitors, co-workers or physician staff…believe me it comes from all these sources. Being young looking, single and attractive makes it worse. While getting older has its down side, the decrease in harrassment has been a positive…ha ha.

Jeannette, I’m glad to see that at least one nurse in the world is not a crazy, sex-craved fiend. As a doctor’s wife, I have run into so many horrible situations where the nurses sit at the nurses station making obvious passes at my husband. They have a picture of him posted on their bulletin board with kisses on it. I even had one of the nurses, who my husband complained to me on a few occasions about her asking if he was happily married and if he would rub her inner thighs, page my husband last night to flirt. I would luv to report these women for sexual harrassment because if it were the other way around I’m sure that they would do the same to him but I respect and trust my hubby enough to let him handle it on his own.