NurseZone.com
In an article about physicians not treating nurses as equals, Dr. Gazelle was quoted: “Much of this stems from the different ways doctors and nurses are trained. Doctors are taught from the beginning that they are the head of the team, that they are better than nurses, that the skill set of nurses is inferior to their own. This leaves them feeling entitled to put down nurses and mistrust their judgment.” “Nurses need to feel empowered to take on the over-arching authority of physicians and see themselves as equal partners in the care of patients,” Gazelle added. “Some of this can be in the nursing curriculum and much is on-the-job. Obviously, for the latter, nurses need institutional backing for this to be successful and, fortunately, a number of initiatives have come to the fore.”