If you would like to come down off of your high horse for a little bit, permit me to educate you a little on personnel in clinics and hospitals. I was a Registered Medical Laboratory Technologist. I was highly trained in the specialized field of Medical Technology, which focused strongly on phlebotomy. You are right in one way; all females in the hospital are called nurses. You are dead wrong in other ways though. I have never referred to myself as a nurse, nor have I ever heard a fellow lab tech call themselves a nurse. We know what we are; we’re lab technologists.
What used to get my goat was nurses who would draw specimens from patients that were useless to us - hemolyzed, in the wrong anti-coagulant, from contaminated sites, etc (note - these specimens were volunteered - we never asked nurses to draw for us, cause we know that is not their specialty). Lab techs are the sharp-shooters when patients need blood drawn; nurses are nowhere near as good at it as the people who do it for a couple of hours every day.
Of course, things may be different in the United States. I don’t think they are that different, since my Registered Technologist status was good across Canada and the US.
I too find clinic assistants who call themselves “nurses” offensive. This one was especially bad, but unfortunately not that uncommon. They have little education. Usually High school and, at the extreme, one year of Junior College. Before I started school, I was a nursing assistant after 3 weeks of training.
For the most part, if you called any of them on it they would be offended and insist they ARE nurses, just not “registered.”
She is threatening a patient…she could lose her license for that one.
She is rude and needs to be dealt with by her boss. Is she an RN, LPN or a medical assistant. I find aides who call themselves assistants offensive especially considering “registered nurse” is a legally protected term. You have to have a degree in nursing and have had passed the state boards. So is licensed practical nurse. You have to have a certificate and have passed the state boards. medical assistant isn’t legally protected and unfortunatly anyone in a medical office can call themselves that. MAs can give shots which is about the only difference between them and a secretary.
So report the behavior and if appropriate report them to your state’s licensing board. (FYI…all nurses who lose their license have their name and former license number published and every applicant gets checked against this list.)
Her attitude towards the patients, her complete lack of respect for privacy, and her inappropriate cultural comments were way, way, way out of line. WAY. I can’t believe she even has any patients at that rate.
Good for you for writing a letter. Write more, or CC it, if you can think of anybody else to send it to! Behavior like that in so-called healing professions just make me sick.
Abso-friggin-lutely. She’s either an unhappy person or really dislikes her job. Either way, I’d write a complaint letter and forward it to her manager, her manager’s manager, and so on up the ladder. There’s no excuse for her behavior.