Few Quebecers understand the realities of the nursing profession. This is normal, because we are very busy caring for people and have little inclination to play politics or make our voices heard.
A little defeatist too: so accustomed to seeing all the spotlights turned towards other professions, reluctant to put themselves forward, that our role and our skills have completely changed since the time of the nuns. We must not complain about not being considered at our true value if we remain silent about our reality.
After a (too) short college diploma (DEC), he is possible to take the exam of the Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ) and become a nurse (good luck!). 20 years ago, a technique was enough to start in the profession, and today’s technicians should be recognized for the full extent of their knowledge and skills with “grandfather clauses”.
On the other hand, for the next cohorts, the baccalaureate should be seen as the minimum to access the profession. Medicine and nursing have become considerably more complex in recent decades.
During the DEC, we learn a little bit of everything, we overview the different specialties: medicine, surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics, geriatrics, etc. It’s a real “sprinkling” and then continuing with the baccalaureate allows us to deepen our knowledge a little more, without making us specialists. We then practice our profession in a particular field and we thus “specialize” in the field.
It takes on average two years to feel comfortable in a particular area and five years to be in full control of our role in a given healthcare setting or department. Doctors specialize at school and we would never ask a geriatrician to do obstetrics. Yet this is what we ask of nurses, to be competent in all sectors and specialties and to be “mobile”. It’s not realistic, it’s not safe, it’s not a good idea.
I repeat, few Quebecers understand the realities of the nursing profession. Few politicians either. We hear politicians say that “a nurse is a nurse” and that “they must be sent where there are the greatest needs”.
I will therefore attempt a comparison which will perhaps strike the imagination of certain politicians: sending a nurse against her will to a department where she is not specialized is like sending Wayne Gretzky as a goalie. A hockey player is a hockey player! Apparently not, a center and a defender are very different, even a left winger and a right winger are not the same thing, it seems. Would Wayne Gretzy be able to stop a few pucks? Probably. But it’s Patrick Roy who we want in front of the goals.
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reference: www.lapresse.ca