Can anyone tell me why this is so?

Every smeartaker should be able to complete the second phase of a smear- the bi-manual exam. It is not rocket science. It is a technique like many others nurses do- invasive- yes but you are already down there anyway! But not dangerous.

Makes me wonder who designed the original smeartakers courses in the first place?

“….the lecturer mentioned the nursing diagnosis and that it differed from medical diagnosis, in that it could only cover what we as nurses could treat. The example she gave was that instead of giving a diagnosis of diabetes, we should instead say something like abnormal blood sugar or abnormal regulation of insulin.”

Wikipedia suggests that “ A nursing diagnosis is a standardized statement about the health of a client (who can be an individual, a family, or a community) for the purpose of providing nursing care. Nursing diagnoses are developed based on data obtained during the nursing assessment”

North American Nursing Diagnosis Association now known as NANDA-International suggests that the difference between a medical diagnosis and a nursing diagnosis is that the medical one deals with the pathophysiology of a disease whereas the nursing diagnosis is about the human response to the actual or potential health problems.Further more…..

“Using a medical diagnosis alone does not provide enough information to accurately diagnosis a patient from a nursing perspective. A holistic nursing assessment is critical for you to identify the potential nursing diagnoses. A medical diagnosis may be a related (or etiologic) factor for a nursing diagnosis, but you must identify defining characteristics of a nursing diagnosis during your assessment; it is impossible to make an accurate nursing diagnosis strictly from a medical diagnosis.”

Never heard so much piffle in my life! So all my study of pathophys and pharmacotheraputics etc goes to waste because I should be using a nursing diagnosis that ignores all that information I have garnered or calls it medical? I include the “defining characteristics” in my SOAP.  Is nursing so obessedwith having their own identity, separate from medicine that they will persist with this dumbing down of nursing practice? Nursing in this age is complicated enough without confusing nursing students even more with an obsolete language. Nursing so needs to get over the medical vs nursing debate and get on with what we are good at and let’s use a common language– the medical one works well as long as we include our extended assessments…..

Out of the mouths of virtual babes-the author of the blog writes:

“This seems to me to be a way to work around the fact that nurses are not supposed to give medical diagnoses, when in fact that is what they are doing. I mean abnormal blood sugar or abnormal insulin production IS diabetes, isn’t it? It just seems silly to me”.

Brings to mind The Emperor’s New Clothes,eh what?

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