Angel is a temporary sobriquet with an opposite side—-devil or course. We don’t need these or others. It indicates a continuing lack of knowledge about nursing and nurses.
Heroes are time controlled and this term disappears quickly as we have seen with Covid
As usual, Claire, you bring your brilliance to bear on the terms "Angel" and "Hero." What is a nurse who is not an Angel? Trouble, right? And yes, hero is often a temporary label for a group of people we don't want to think too hard about. There are probably a lot of vets who feel the same way. We may thank them for their service, but then stiff them on health care, including mental health care, benefits, pension, etc. It's interesting to think that combat veterans may have some analogs with nurse "heroes."
So happy to hear about your clear mammogram! That gorgeous smile says it all!
I strongly agree with you that when we call nurses angels, we absolve ourselves of the responsibility to pay them adequately and to ensure they have a manageable workload. It’s the same thing with teachers. As David Graeber noted in his excellent book Bullshit Jobs, the attitude of people who have BS jobs seems to be that if your job is meaningful, that should count as part of your compensation. No. Only compensation is compensation. And in any case, look what happens when we don’t pay these crucial workers adequately: staffing shortages, which hurt all of us.
I love the wisdom of "only compensation is compensation." Correct. Also, yes, the idea that some of us--often women--do certain work as 'labors of love' is pernicious and can lead to exploitation. Aren't NFL players and even stock brokers also presumed to love what they do? And yet no one ever suggests we shouldn't pay them fair, or even grossly high, compensation. Hmmmm.
Thank you for this lovely comment! It may seem like I wouldn't like it, but I understand the sentiment behind it and appreciate it. Wishing you all the best.
Thank you, and I want to acknowledge a nurse colleague of mine, K, who sent this to me. I am in the middle of a leave of absence for psychiatric well-being. My friend /colleague encouraged my leave noting a stress level that was not conducive to the daily challenges of working in oncology palliative care, or a sustained, dare I say the word, "happy "life. I am so grateful to her and you for shedding light on the fallacy and allowing us to shake off the "shame" sometimes associated with not living "up to" these titles. We are human and the compassion that we give to others, patients, institutions, and the world starts at home for ourselves, I encourage everyone to not be afraid to set boundaries and demonstrate respect for ourselves and our colleagues as these are true measures of compassionate care.
Thank you so much for commenting and congratulations on taking a mental health leave from nursing. I know how hard it is to do that, and publicly owning up to it is even harder. You can feel proud of your bravery. I love the wisdom behind your statement that having and setting boundaries is part of compassionate care for each other, patients, and most of all ourselves. Sending you my biggest hugs and warmest wishes!
Love the idea of empathy being celebrated. I've been at a lot of bedsides where people were dying and it was the people around them and the feelings in the room that mattered--not how much money anyone had. Congrats to you on 3 years of being cancer-free. As you know, pancreatic cancer can be a hard diagnosis. Wonderful that you are doing so well!
Ms. Brown, I have been reading your work for several years, first in the New York Times, then your books, and most recently in The Healing Newsletter. This most recent posting ("Are nurses angels? Um, no.") I shared with my wife Joan, an RN, and the meme you printed was something she immediately recognized from her own nursing experience. Thank you for sharing this.
Congratulations on your 5 year anniversary findings! This November, I have my own 5 year follow-up for my prostate cancer diagnosis, and I am looking forward to a favorable report.
Please keep writing; I very much appreciate your perspective on healthcare.
Thank you so much for writing and my best to your wife. Thank you also for your congratulations on my five year screening being clean. I hope your five year screening goes similarly swimmingly. I do plan to keep writing. Encouragement from readers makes all the difference.
One of my favorite authors wrote years ago that "writing is a solitary experience". I took those words to heart, and as a result, I have tried to reach out to those writers whose work I have enjoyed, to let them know how much their efforts have meant to me as a reader. In doing that, I realized that reading can be a solitary experience as well, and it is very satifying for both individuals to connect.
So, as you plan to keep writing, I promise to keep reading.
Lou
(excuse the formality of my original greeting, but I wanted to be respectful)
Uh oh, I've been calling health care professionals "angels in medicine" for over 20 years! I've been running a web site, based on a series I began while an editor at Medscape, with the purpose of highlighting "the incredible work people in healthcare do to improve the health of the world. We especially focus on caring for those with little access to quality healthcare, such as the homeless and indigent, the incarcerated, and those in less developed and war-torn parts of the globe." To me, this going beyond the daily involvement and caring -- such as the work by Doctors without Borders or Dr. Paul Farmer's Partners in Health -- called out to me to call such people Angels. I hope they don't mind! You can check out the site and decide for yourself: https://medangel.org/
I exempt you from my exhortation not to consider nurses "angels." It seems like you are talking about a different labeling of angels--you are highlighting the work done by health care professionals to care for those whom the system has forgotten or never been there for. They are "angels" who step into the breach. When nurses in the US are routinely called angels it is meant as a compliment, but comes across as a diminution of their clinical skills and an elision of what they are up against in terms of the work environment. Not all angels are the same, it seems. Thanks for commenting!
I am thrilled with your 5 year mammogram news! We have walked this journey together while separated geographically - my 5 year mammogram was clear too!! While it is good news in one way, the 5 year review is full of ambivalence for me - I am not excited. A cancer diagnosis is life changing and even with a clear mammo at year 5 and a good prognosis, there is always that niggling fear that it will return...
You exactly capture what I want to say about the five year mark. Yes, it is exciting, but it comes with no guarantee that there will not be a recurrence. That fear dims, but it doesn't go away--at least not for me and for many of the women I have heard from. Congratulations on your five year good news, though, too!
No; nurses do not have the ethereal quality of “standing between earth and heaven,” as David in the Hebrew bible remarked when he saw an angel. Nurses are human, and we, too, shall one day make the journey from earth. But we will want someone to accompany us on earth in the last days and minutes to give us safe passage. Nurses do this. Counselors and clerics and social workers and physicians and sages who live next door — they, among so many others, do this. When people call us nurses angels after we have cared for the loved one who has died, they are thanking us for giving their loved ones safe passage. They don’t have other words for what we do and for the experience we have journeyed with them on. So while we are not angels, we have helped them as we helped their loved one to navigate the space between earth and whatever comes next.
Beautiful, elegant and eloquent. You make a strong case for the heartfelt impulse behind nurses being called angels. I love the image of safe passage. It is a gift to help a dying person and their family find that, and if the appreciation of safe passage leads people to call nurses angels...that makes a lot of sense. Maybe we need to separate the theological from the clinical and also understand that the label "angel" is a recognition of nurses' talent and ability, but in no way a substitute for fair compensation.
Precisely. And I wouldn’t even call it theological but rather the attempt to put into words an experience that defies words. The ineffable cannot by definition be expressed. When we try, we often go for mystical language. It’s all we have. “Angels.” “Heaven.” “Standing between heaven and earth.” “Safe passage.” All are kind of nonsensical, but we know the experience. That’s what patients families are doing: trying to put into words what cannot be. So nurses as angels is nonsensical. We are humans. But we were there and provided care (succor) during an experience that defies plain language. (If it didn’t, Theresa, you and I would have nothing to say, paradoxically.) The real issues of the (im)moral conditions of our work remain.
Angel is a temporary sobriquet with an opposite side—-devil or course. We don’t need these or others. It indicates a continuing lack of knowledge about nursing and nurses.
Heroes are time controlled and this term disappears quickly as we have seen with Covid
As usual, Claire, you bring your brilliance to bear on the terms "Angel" and "Hero." What is a nurse who is not an Angel? Trouble, right? And yes, hero is often a temporary label for a group of people we don't want to think too hard about. There are probably a lot of vets who feel the same way. We may thank them for their service, but then stiff them on health care, including mental health care, benefits, pension, etc. It's interesting to think that combat veterans may have some analogs with nurse "heroes."
So happy to hear about your clear mammogram! That gorgeous smile says it all!
I strongly agree with you that when we call nurses angels, we absolve ourselves of the responsibility to pay them adequately and to ensure they have a manageable workload. It’s the same thing with teachers. As David Graeber noted in his excellent book Bullshit Jobs, the attitude of people who have BS jobs seems to be that if your job is meaningful, that should count as part of your compensation. No. Only compensation is compensation. And in any case, look what happens when we don’t pay these crucial workers adequately: staffing shortages, which hurt all of us.
I love the wisdom of "only compensation is compensation." Correct. Also, yes, the idea that some of us--often women--do certain work as 'labors of love' is pernicious and can lead to exploitation. Aren't NFL players and even stock brokers also presumed to love what they do? And yet no one ever suggests we shouldn't pay them fair, or even grossly high, compensation. Hmmmm.
Nurses are the angels on earth.
Thank you for this lovely comment! It may seem like I wouldn't like it, but I understand the sentiment behind it and appreciate it. Wishing you all the best.
Thank you, and I want to acknowledge a nurse colleague of mine, K, who sent this to me. I am in the middle of a leave of absence for psychiatric well-being. My friend /colleague encouraged my leave noting a stress level that was not conducive to the daily challenges of working in oncology palliative care, or a sustained, dare I say the word, "happy "life. I am so grateful to her and you for shedding light on the fallacy and allowing us to shake off the "shame" sometimes associated with not living "up to" these titles. We are human and the compassion that we give to others, patients, institutions, and the world starts at home for ourselves, I encourage everyone to not be afraid to set boundaries and demonstrate respect for ourselves and our colleagues as these are true measures of compassionate care.
Thank you so much for commenting and congratulations on taking a mental health leave from nursing. I know how hard it is to do that, and publicly owning up to it is even harder. You can feel proud of your bravery. I love the wisdom behind your statement that having and setting boundaries is part of compassionate care for each other, patients, and most of all ourselves. Sending you my biggest hugs and warmest wishes!
I agree 100%! Why can't empathy be recognized, celebrated, and maybe work its way back into the lives of many humans??
Congrats on being cancer free! I'm working on 3 years with no evidence of disease (pancreatic - Acinar cell carcinomoa).
Love the idea of empathy being celebrated. I've been at a lot of bedsides where people were dying and it was the people around them and the feelings in the room that mattered--not how much money anyone had. Congrats to you on 3 years of being cancer-free. As you know, pancreatic cancer can be a hard diagnosis. Wonderful that you are doing so well!
Ms. Brown, I have been reading your work for several years, first in the New York Times, then your books, and most recently in The Healing Newsletter. This most recent posting ("Are nurses angels? Um, no.") I shared with my wife Joan, an RN, and the meme you printed was something she immediately recognized from her own nursing experience. Thank you for sharing this.
Congratulations on your 5 year anniversary findings! This November, I have my own 5 year follow-up for my prostate cancer diagnosis, and I am looking forward to a favorable report.
Please keep writing; I very much appreciate your perspective on healthcare.
Dr. Lou Verardo
Thank you so much for writing and my best to your wife. Thank you also for your congratulations on my five year screening being clean. I hope your five year screening goes similarly swimmingly. I do plan to keep writing. Encouragement from readers makes all the difference.
One of my favorite authors wrote years ago that "writing is a solitary experience". I took those words to heart, and as a result, I have tried to reach out to those writers whose work I have enjoyed, to let them know how much their efforts have meant to me as a reader. In doing that, I realized that reading can be a solitary experience as well, and it is very satifying for both individuals to connect.
So, as you plan to keep writing, I promise to keep reading.
Lou
(excuse the formality of my original greeting, but I wanted to be respectful)
Sounds like a plan! I look forward to our exchanges--reader to writer.
Great news
Thank you!
Uh oh, I've been calling health care professionals "angels in medicine" for over 20 years! I've been running a web site, based on a series I began while an editor at Medscape, with the purpose of highlighting "the incredible work people in healthcare do to improve the health of the world. We especially focus on caring for those with little access to quality healthcare, such as the homeless and indigent, the incarcerated, and those in less developed and war-torn parts of the globe." To me, this going beyond the daily involvement and caring -- such as the work by Doctors without Borders or Dr. Paul Farmer's Partners in Health -- called out to me to call such people Angels. I hope they don't mind! You can check out the site and decide for yourself: https://medangel.org/
I exempt you from my exhortation not to consider nurses "angels." It seems like you are talking about a different labeling of angels--you are highlighting the work done by health care professionals to care for those whom the system has forgotten or never been there for. They are "angels" who step into the breach. When nurses in the US are routinely called angels it is meant as a compliment, but comes across as a diminution of their clinical skills and an elision of what they are up against in terms of the work environment. Not all angels are the same, it seems. Thanks for commenting!
Thanks, Theresa! And I must say, your work highlighting the challenges nurses are facing is rather saintly as well. Thanks for your efforts!
You're welcome!
I am thrilled with your 5 year mammogram news! We have walked this journey together while separated geographically - my 5 year mammogram was clear too!! While it is good news in one way, the 5 year review is full of ambivalence for me - I am not excited. A cancer diagnosis is life changing and even with a clear mammo at year 5 and a good prognosis, there is always that niggling fear that it will return...
You exactly capture what I want to say about the five year mark. Yes, it is exciting, but it comes with no guarantee that there will not be a recurrence. That fear dims, but it doesn't go away--at least not for me and for many of the women I have heard from. Congratulations on your five year good news, though, too!
No; nurses do not have the ethereal quality of “standing between earth and heaven,” as David in the Hebrew bible remarked when he saw an angel. Nurses are human, and we, too, shall one day make the journey from earth. But we will want someone to accompany us on earth in the last days and minutes to give us safe passage. Nurses do this. Counselors and clerics and social workers and physicians and sages who live next door — they, among so many others, do this. When people call us nurses angels after we have cared for the loved one who has died, they are thanking us for giving their loved ones safe passage. They don’t have other words for what we do and for the experience we have journeyed with them on. So while we are not angels, we have helped them as we helped their loved one to navigate the space between earth and whatever comes next.
Beautiful, elegant and eloquent. You make a strong case for the heartfelt impulse behind nurses being called angels. I love the image of safe passage. It is a gift to help a dying person and their family find that, and if the appreciation of safe passage leads people to call nurses angels...that makes a lot of sense. Maybe we need to separate the theological from the clinical and also understand that the label "angel" is a recognition of nurses' talent and ability, but in no way a substitute for fair compensation.
Precisely. And I wouldn’t even call it theological but rather the attempt to put into words an experience that defies words. The ineffable cannot by definition be expressed. When we try, we often go for mystical language. It’s all we have. “Angels.” “Heaven.” “Standing between heaven and earth.” “Safe passage.” All are kind of nonsensical, but we know the experience. That’s what patients families are doing: trying to put into words what cannot be. So nurses as angels is nonsensical. We are humans. But we were there and provided care (succor) during an experience that defies plain language. (If it didn’t, Theresa, you and I would have nothing to say, paradoxically.) The real issues of the (im)moral conditions of our work remain.
A great clarification. Thank you!