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but in reality, this rarely works. I have been an RN for 13 years now, doing MT on the side. I do not look at this from a one-sided MT point of view, but rather from a mother's point of view.
As a nurse, you must know that even when you try to educate your patients as kindly and nonconfrontationally as possible, when you start to point out to them things they may be doing wrong (such as not taking meds consistently or correctly, continuing to smoke when they have emphysema or COPD, eat tons of salt on a low-salt diet, etc.), IMMEDIATELY a wall goes up and the mentality is "How dare you try to educate me on MY life and point out my shortcomings".
Public health nursing is even trickier. From experience, even being as kind and non judgmental as you can possibly be, 99% of the time, this mother does not want to be aware that other people know about her problem. Most of the time, they think "OK, if I just ignore it, it will go away eventually". If others come to them and say, "Look, I know you have a problem, let me help you with it", they only get more embarassed knowing that now everyone at their kids school knows that they are not getting rid of it, and she will likely tell you exactly where to go.
I agree with what you are saying, that we should try to help each other out more. I am not being judgmental, but I guess after 13 years of this, I see the way things are and not the way we wish them to be!
I don't know of any nurse that will make a home visit. In fact, our county is getting rid of school nurses starting next year. They will have 2 nurses rotating throughout 24 elementary schools in the county, none in high school or middle schools.
From experience, the Health Department is usually the only entity that can do anything about this. They can come in and give the mom some education, determine why the child can't get rid of them, etc. For some reason, most people will accept that kind of help from the Health Department before they would a concerned parent from their kids school. Maybe they feel like nobody knows if the Health Department comes, but everybody knows if another parent comes over?
You seem to have a very positive outlook on things. Good luck in your schooling. |
Your approach works wonderfully in theory... - mt
