6 Public Misconceptions That Affect Nursing

Nurses are highly educated decision makers who carry responsibility for patients around the clock, and without us health services stop. Yet many nurses still answer the question "what do you do?" with "oh, I'm just a nurse." That reflex comes from absorbing the public's stereotypes. Naming the misconceptions is the first step to refusing them.

1. Nursing is a woman's profession

Most nurses are women, but men keep entering the field. Per the U.S. Census Bureau, men made up 9.6% of registered nurses in 2011, up from 2.7% in 1970. The lingering belief that nursing is women's work sits underneath most of the other misconceptions on this list.

2. A nurse's job is to follow doctor's orders

The handmaiden image is wrong. Nurses report to senior nurses and hold independent responsibility for their patients. That includes catching a physician's error, such as a bad prescription, before it reaches the patient. Doctors and nurses work as a team, and much of the doctor's decision making rests on the nurse's observations, interventions, and feedback.

3. Nurses are sexually promiscuous

There is nothing alluring about the end of a shift spent covered in body fluids and running on empty. Surveys have found nursing among the most sexually fantasized-about jobs, and the media's sexualized nurse is everywhere. The stereotype maps a caring role onto a dominant-submissive fantasy, and it may help some people manage the fact that nurses hold real power in the clinical setting. It does nothing for the profession's image, and it is worth asking how it feeds disrespect and workplace sexual violence against nurses.

4. Nurses are ministering angels

The flip side is the angel with a "calling," giving endless love for little pay. The image traces back to nursing's roots in religious orders, and it still costs nurses today: lower pay than comparable work, long high-pressure hours, skipped breaks, all excused as devotion. Nurses do put patients first, but nursing is a career like any other, and the conditions of service should be fair.

5. Nurses couldn't make it as doctors

The idea that nursing is the consolation prize for people not smart enough for medicine ignores that these are different roles, not a ranking. Most nurses chose the profession deliberately, drawn to holistic care and close contact with patients. Professional nursing demands serious study, increasingly at the baccalaureate level, and specializing to the doctoral level takes as many years as qualifying as a physician.

6. A nurse's job is menial dirty work

Taking a blood pressure or adjusting an IV can look routine to an outsider who never sees the observation, assessment, and problem solving behind it. That clinical reasoning is the part that takes years of study. Yes, some of the work is literally dirty, but that is a small slice of the job, and it is care patients cannot do for themselves.

These misconceptions have real consequences: fewer students entering the field, more nurses leaving it, and weak public funding for safe staffing. Within your own circles, correct the record and say plainly what a nurse is. Hold your head up.