# ORDERLIES! And Other Help the Federal Government Could Be Providing **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [March 28, 2020, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orderlies-and-other-help-the-federal-government-could-be-providing/850548 "2020-03-28T23:26:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orderlies-and-other-help-the-federal-government-could-be-providing/850548/21 "2020-04-06T01:59:38Z")
Isn’t “orderly” just an old-fashioned name for a male nurse’s aide, who happened to do some of the heavy lifting (literally) that female aides couldn’t do? ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orderlies-and-other-help-the-federal-government-could-be-providing/850548/22 "2020-04-06T22:26:10Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Isn’t “orderly” just an old-fashioned name for a male nurse’s aide, who happened to do some of the heavy lifting (literally) that female aides couldn’t do? Top dictionary definition online is: > [@](#): > > an attendant in a hospital responsible for the nonmedical care of patients and the maintenance of order and cleanliness. Wikipedia has this: > [@](#): > > In healthcare, an orderly (also known as a ward assistant, nurse assistant or healthcare assistant) is a hospital attendant whose job consists of assisting medical and nursing staff with various nursing and medical interventions. > > The highest role of an orderly is that of an operations assistant. An operations assistant requires people of a higher caliber who are knowledgeable in advanced medical terminology and assist with specialist surgery setups, and typically an operations assistant understands more about surgical procedures than does a registered nurse working outside of theatres. An operations assistant is a direct assistant to consultant-level doctors more than to nurses.[1] These duties are classified as routine tasks involving no risk for the patient. > **[Orderly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orderly)** > > In healthcare, an orderly (also known as a ward assistant, nurse assistant or healthcare assistant) is a hospital attendant whose job consists of assisting medical and nursing staff with various nursing and medical interventions. These duties are classified as routine tasks involving no risk for the patient. > Orderlies are often utilized in various hospital departments. Orderly duties can range in scope depending on the area of the health care facility they are employed. For that reason, duties c... I’m not seeing historical notes about ‘male who does things too heavy for nurses,’ possibly because nursing has been done throughout history by both males and females (the males mostly in military settings, pre-20th century). The idea in this thread would not be limited to males, by the way. As the tasks they’d be doing might require physical strength, there might be a strength component to qualifying for the program, but that doesn’t mean all males would be accepted and all females rejected. And, again, the proposed program could encompass “patient care assistants” or “operations assistants” or any other relevant term. “Orderlies” was mentioned because it serves the purpose of conveying ‘no college degree or further study is required to do this work.’ The word still shows up in online conversations about the health-care field, as here: > [@](#): > > I know a hospital that uses orderlies on its ortho surgical unit. Their main duty was to assist people in & out of bed for toileting, going to PT, etc. they would also help with repositioning, straightening beds, stocking linen, being a gopher etc > > This was in addition to PCT, not in place of. > **[What happened to orderlies?](https://allnurses.com/what-happened-orderlies-t473179/)** > > Just curious as I have been reading some about the history of professional nursing. Do some hospitals still have orderlies? If so do they differ from cnas? Why ... ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2020, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orderlies-and-other-help-the-federal-government-could-be-providing/850548/23 "2020-04-06T23:29:32Z")
Can you cite anything that says medical staff are attributing their exhaustion even in part to doing the sort of work that doesn’t need to be done by doctors and nurses? I haven’t seen it - the only thing I’ve seen is complaints about having to clean and reuse personal protective equipment that \*isn’t meant to be reused \*. It’s not that the cleaning adds to their exhaustion - it’s that the mask is supposed to be changed between patients, not reused for days. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2020, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orderlies-and-other-help-the-federal-government-could-be-providing/850548/24 "2020-04-08T01:52:32Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Can you cite anything that says medical staff are attributing their exhaustion even in part to doing the sort of work that doesn’t need to be done by doctors and nurses? I haven’t seen it - the only thing I’ve seen is complaints about having to clean and reuse personal protective equipment that \*isn’t meant to be reused \*. It’s not that the cleaning adds to their exhaustion - it’s that the mask is supposed to be changed between patients, not reused for days. There’s no way to prove that one way or the other until PPE is freely and copiously available. But to me it’s common sense that the work of cleaning is not only time-consuming and physically taxing, but also stresses the availability of PPE—because the process of cleaning brings the cleaner into contact with surfaces that may host live virus. (Kind of the point of the cleaning). So having more hands to do that work would be not only a physical relief, but an emotional relief, too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orderlies-and-other-help-the-federal-government-could-be-providing/850548.md?page=1)