Nursing Me Black

What an insightful and lovely post. I am quite impressed with all NURSES with a capital "NURSE".

Excellent Article, Nursethis21.Thank you...

Very nice perspective!!

I did not grow up in a family that was colorblind but early into my adulthood I soon learned that people are people. I had all sorts of misconceptions, false beliefs told to me by family and when you get to a certain age you realize that so many things you were taught are just simply false. You learn this by life experience and by developing your own perception of the world around you and the people in it. At our core, we are all the same. We need, love, support, grieve, get mad, sad, happy, get sick, get tired and need affection. One of the reasons I love nursing is becasue it reinforces to me that we are all the same at our core. We may have differences in our belief systems personally but our goal is common when we work and that is to take care of the patient to the best of our ability. I am proud to live in a multi-cultural society and look forward to a time where the places we come from just don't matter because we are all here together now no matter how we got here. I feel its ok to look back at where we came from, IF, we learn from it and keep moving forward. We can't change yesterday but we can change tomorrow. Thanks for provoking some thought, loved your post!

I hope you meet a color blind world.

Hello to "Nursing Me Black" I am pleased to meet your acquaintance. I am A female of African American heritage who happens to hold a BSN in nursing. I can not express to you the hard ship that I have been through over the years as a nurse. I have been forced to resign my first year as a RN due to being taught by other nurses all the wrong ways of doing clinical procedures. I have had another facility suspend me for being a patient advocate which is what I was taught to do. I have had a facility try to steal my license from me intentionally by having one of their staff members steal narcotics from my med cart prior to me coming on shift. I have a pending legal matter with this particular facility. Overall, I have had a lack of acceptance period in the years of nursing and had to work harder at it and prove myself qualified for the job by my knowledge base and job performance. I just find that when they see the RN status I am not liked because I went to school a little longer than most. Why... I say to myself the hatred? Not only that, as you stated earlier you look around and you find yourself a minority. The truth is I have seen this to be the case. I have even tried to research where are African American Nurses residing in America and whether they are content or not? I found that most minority nurses are predominantly in southern states. I said that may be my next move. More than anything I believe nurses in general should be unionized because there are so many avenues that an employer can use to let you go in this field of work. Dont you agree?

Quote from secretsyHello to "Nursing Me Black" I am pleased to meet your acquaintance. I am A female of African American heritage who happens to hold a BSN in nursing. I can not express to you the hard ship that I have been through over the years as a nurse...More than anything I believe nurses in general should be unionized because there are so many ways that an employer can use to let you go in this field of work. Dont you agree?

Thanks for the inspiration!

NurseThis21,This was very beautiful and I am very happy you spoke of these issues in such dynamic poetic words.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I like the statement that you said about us working on ourselves first, before being able to save others. This is so true b/c our characteristics help to shape who we are and the way we care for others. I believe that if we do not tend to the inadequacies that we ourselves may carry, it may hinder us as nurses to share the compassionate and unconditional care that our patients so desperately need....Again, great post! God bless...

Thank you for this thoughtful post. I hope, too, for a colorblind world.

Hello Nursing Me Black......I am a black nurse and have been one for 35yrs. Nursing is hard and racism makes it harder. The last hospital I worked at went to mandatory color coding for staff..nurses could wear blue or white. Supposedly this was for the patient's to be able to recognize who was who. I can't tell you how many times I was asked " are you the lab, respiratory, dietary even environmental" and these were not the patients, they were other nurses. I had to ask them what color do I have on, duh. There are some "white" people who do not want to think that you could possibly be on their level and the majority of these people couldn't nurse their way out of a wet paper bag. Especially those that have never worked anywhere but in one hopsital. I have skills on top of skills, but I have ALWAYS had to prove myself. So, don't become color blind look at nursing with all eyes open- after all it's the patients that count and when someone is REALLY sick they don't care what color YOU are, all they want is for you to make them feel better. I can count on one hand the times that I have been rejected by a patient because I was black. We are here in full force and have always been here, we were nurses to the master and his family during slavery. Nursing is a rewarding profession and I would'nt be anything else!:heartbeat