It concerns me greatly that the president of this country would choose to demote nursing as a professional degree.
The very definition of a profession is: “a person who attains (their) position through educational credentials rather than inheritance, characterized by or conforming to technical or ethical standards of a profession.”
As a retired nurse with two masters degrees and 45 years of experience, I am very resentful of the idea that nurses are to demoted by a man who barely squeaked through college and obtained much of his “prestige” by privilege.
As someone who has been on the front lines in nursing, then also on the “patient” end of the spectrum, I can tell you that these women and men are truly the essential workers in the health care field.
With today’s level of required technical and computer skills, it is highly insulting to suggest that they not “professionals” in every sense of the word. Anyone who has ever been hospitalized, had surgical procedures, been treated in an ED or needed psychological therapy needs to know that the nurses who care for them are skilled and compassionate professionals.
I am hoping that the ANA, the nursing community, and the general public will rise in protest to defend these women and men who are serving, often at personal risk to their own health, to provide care for the injured, the ill, the terminal and the grieving.
Sandra Marshall, East Hampton