Rejecting the Status of the Nurse as the Other
Nurses as the invisible other is a concept that is neither new nor foreign. The term “invisible other” serves as a stigma that seeks to reduce the bearer or the one acknowledged as such to nothing. In their article, Invisible other: Understanding safe spaces for queer learners and teachers in adult education, Toynton (2006) explained the ‘invisible other’ as the disappearance of the self-identity and confidence of queer people while navigating educational spaces. Although Toynton (2006) argued that this disappearance could be self-imposed or from an external source, in this article, I will refer to the representation of nurses as the ‘invisible other’ as an external imposition, that is, as coming from a source other than nursing. Here, the ‘invisible other’ is the unnoticed, the unseen, the unacknowledged. In the healthcare system, the invisible other is the hands, not the minds.
A few days ago, I got a text from one of my friends. We had just exchanged good night pleasantries, and I went about my night routine. Few minutes later, I got a string of texts from her that ended with “I am sorry. I just wanted to vent.” Among the texts that she sent to me, one was particularly distressing, and it was about her job as a nurse. One of the texts she sent to me read, “I am fed up with nursing, and I am just two years in. I am met with situations that shocks me, how a defibrillator can make more decisions than a nurse. How no one values us.”
It was not long after I got this text that a prominent doctor went on TV to say that there is a shortage of nurses and not physicians, and that more hands are needed because “we have got the minds” (emphasis mine). It does not matter how one might try to interpret this sentiment, one thing is clear: It is the doctors that are the minds, and nurses only serve to do, as in to receive instruction from the minds.
Statements like this have been around for years despite the many attempts by nurses and other nursing bodies to redeem the role of nursing. I am reminded of one of the presentations by some of my classmates in nursing school. They began the presentation by asking how many people would be ‘willing’ to let nurses prescribe medication to them. This was at a time where the Ontario Government was looking to expand the scope of nurses to include RN prescribing. While I cannot remember how many people raised their hands to show agreement, I remember asking the presenters at the end of their presentation why they chose that question to open a presentation. The premise of that question implies that even with the necessary education, nurses are not competent enough to perform complex tasks like medication prescription. No one ever asks if they would have second thoughts about letting the doctor assume the nurse’s roles, despite the variations in education. I have since found myself wondering what it would have looked like if the presenters opened their presentation with “what is RN- prescribing and how does it work?” because frankly, medication prescription is not within the scope of the registered nurse.
Nurses as the hands but not the minds is one of the ways that nurses are represented as the invisible other, still, it remains the most pervasive depiction of nurses. Here, we might understand the hands to mean those who do only what they are told to do, the non-critical thinkers. This understanding opens up new ways of examining the invisible other from a feminist lens.
The narrative of nurses as the invisible other, which I insist is patriarchal, directly abuts the insistence to paint nurses as just motherly and nurturing (read submissive), and not critical thinkers (read incapable of complex tasks). Empathy and care are integral in nursing, but so is critical and fast thinking, and so is completing complex tasks. Sweet &Norman (1995) articulate that women’s social positioning in relation to men, which is hierarchical and patriarchal, explains why traditionally, nurses are perceived as doctors’ handmaidens. It is worth mentioning that I do not seek to pit nurses against doctors or vice versa. However, I am only attempting to redeem and to reject the patriarchal representation of nurses as the other.
That said, Sweet and Norman (1995) further articulate that the positions of nurses and doctors mirrored the sexual division of labour within the society. They explained that the sexual division of labour is such that women tend to the emotional environment, while men make the “important” decisions (Sweet & Norman, 1995). If this is true, it is safe to assert that the depiction of nurses as just caring and nurturing, and the representation of nurses as the invisible other is sexist and misogynistic. Of importance is the fact that the doctor who went on TV (referred earlier) is a woman. This does not change the argument. Instead, it buttresses it to show the pervasiveness of patriarchy in that women, too, can be gatekeepers of the very thing that oppresses them. Does it then come at a surprise if the medical students, now physicians, are socialized to see nurses as inferior?
Since both professions have opened up for both sexes, although nursing more than medicine, a possible question that may arise is whether the depiction of nurses as the invisible other remains a sexist act, (in spite) of men being in the profession. When this is the case, it is important to remember that in both professions, one sex still remains dominant than the other. In 2019, The Canadian Nurses Association reported that 91% of regulated nurses in Canada are women (CNA, 2019).
What happens, then, if nursing were to become a male-dominated profession? Would the narrative of nurses as just caring, nurturing, and the invisible other change? Or are we saying that women are incapable of thinking critically?
References
Sweet, S.J., & Norman, I.J. (1995). The nurse–doctor relationship: A selective literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 22, 165–170.
Toynton, R., (2006) ‘Invisible other’ Understanding safe spaces for queer learners and teachers in adult education. Studies in the Education of Adults, 38 (2), 178–194, DOI: 10.1080/02660830.2006.11661532
