Job flexibility is one of the nursing profession's
strongest drawing cards. Ms. Belkin works one day a
week at Sinai Hospital in a "float pool." She fills a staff
need wherever there is a shortage. This allows her to at-
tend to her duties with Hadassah and her family, and
gives her time to return to college for her bachelor's in
nursing degree.
Thirty-two year-old Cindy Diskin of Farmington
Hills keeps a different schedule. A Hadassah Nurses
Council member, she works full-time at Sinai. Ms. Diskin
has a bachelor of science degree in nursing (BSN)
and soon will begin working toward her master's
degree. She is the mother of four and has to roll out of
bed at 5:15 every morning to be at work before her 7 a.m.
shift begins.
Has she seen Jewish stereotyping in her career? "Oh,
sure. I don't look Jewish — I have blonde hair and green
eyes. I'll have patients say something to me about a Jew-
ish doctor, for example. Then they'll say, 'Well, you're
not Jewish so you wouldn't know.' I'll say, 'Yes, I am Jew-
ish.' I've had patients ask me where my horns are when
they find out I'm Jewish. But when people of a different
religion are sick, I express to them that I am Jewish, and
I'm also a nurse and rm here to help."
Ms. Diskin has heard discouraging words about be-
coming a nurse — not a doctor. People occasionally say,
"You're Jewish. Why do you do bedpans?" She responds,
"I had an aunt who was a nurse and she was a won-
derful mentor to me. I saw how she helped people. And
my family always supported what I wanted to be. I have
very supportive parents."
If anyone thinks nursing only involves cleaning bed-
pans, think again. Here's how Ms. Diskin describes a
"code blue," which many nurses face on a daily basis.
"A code blue is when someone is respiratory distressed
or cardiac distressed. They've either stopped breathing
or their heart has stopped. The (nurse's) adrenaline is
flowing. You're getting equipment, you're getting the
emergency room cart, you're running down the hallway
into the patient's room. You're literally running full-
speed, and someone else is usually running right behind
you with a 'crash-cart' full of equipment.
"I'm small — 5 feet tall and 100 pounds — and I've
hopped right on the patient's bed, straddled the side of
the patient and initiated CPR by pumping the chest.
Physicians run into the room. There are a lot of things
that go on in that room. It can go on for 20 minutes or

ut RNs In America

w= ci npiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Health
Professions, DivisioryaNursing. They are from the March 1992 National Sample Survey of Registered
Nurses, and represent the latest U.S. government statistics available. All comparisons represent changes
since 1988, the year of the governments prior study:

• The number of employed RNs in the United States has grown _by 14 percent
• The total number of employed RNs in the United States is more than 1,853,000.
• The average age for all. RNs is 43 and is gradually increasing.
• The number of all RNs under the age of 35 has decreased by 16 percent.
• Thirty percent of all RNs have baccalaureate degrees, 8 percent have master's or doctoral
degrees, and 28 percent have associate's degrees.
• The number of new RNs graduating with associate's degrees increased 26.5 percent.
• The number of new RNs with bachelors degrees increased by 23 percent.
• Sixty-six percent of employed RNs work in a hospital setting.
• The number of nurses who work ;in public/community health settings has increased by 30 percent
• The average annual salary of full-time nurses in the U.S. is $37,738 — a substantial 33 percent
increase over 1988's $28,383 average. -

.

longer. If it's your patient and you're in the room, you're
the one that initiates CPR.
"Then the physicians get there and continue the CPR.
By this time, there's a team in the room and everybody's
doing something. The RN is pulling medications out, get-
ting tubes out of the crash-cart and giving things to the
physician. The team works together — the RNs as well
as the physicians. I've even been in an elevator when a
patient has coded."
Shirley Kramer credits code blues as a good reason
for staying retired. "Now that rm older, I know that I
could not run a code blue. And 'run' literally means to
run it!"
Both Ms. Kramer and Ms. Diskin knew they want-
ed to be nurses since they were children. But Botsford
Hospital's Elaine Webber, a certified pediatric nurse
practitioner (PNP), says, "I hadn't decided I wanted to
be a nurse until I was at the University of Michigan fill-

ing out the part of the application that asked me to de-
clare my major. Wanting to be a nurse was not a life-
long thing for me. It was sort of like, 'Gee, that looks
interesting. Let me try it.' And I got in.
"I got some flak about being a nurse from some fam-
ily members, but not from my immediate family. I heard
things like, 'Oh, come on, Elaine. You're smarter than
that.' That made me feel angry. Once I began study-
ing nursing, I discovered that I really liked it. It's a re-
ally interesting career in the sciences."
Ms. Webber works three days a week as a clinical
nurse specialist at Botsford and maintains a private busi-
ness.
"On a typical day," she says, "I get up at 5:15 in the
morning and get to work by 7. I listen to my messages
and clear through my desk. I serve on a lot of different
committees, so I catch up on my paperwork and have a
cup of coffee. Then I go through the units and check to
see if everything is OK, or if anything unusual has hap-
pened. After that I check the nursery and see which
moms are breast-feeding, and talk to the nurses and find
out how those moms are doing. I go to the pediatric of-
fice twice a week at 9. I see patients there until noon or
so, just for routine health care, well-baby checks, school
physicals.
"I see a lot of ear infections, sore throats and strep
throats. When I head back to the hospital, I try to go see
those moms whom I learned about earlier in the morn-
ing. see how they're doing and help them out if I need
to. Then I go to whatever meetings I might have that
day."
After she graduated from U-M, Ms. Webber worked
for a year at Mott Hospital in Ann Arbor, then went to
Israel for a year-and-a-half, from 1982 to 1984. It wasn't
quite what she expected.
"I worked at Hadassah Hospital, Mount Scopus cam-
pus," she says. "Unfortunately, it was not a good expe-
rience. I had very high ideals and standards because I
was a new nurse. The only standards I knew were from
U-M. Now, I think I can look at it more judiciously, but
nursing is very behind the times in Israel. Not to be crit-
ical, but it's a younger country. They haven't had the op-
portunities to grow the way we have here.
"When I was there a lot of non-licensed people were
working in the units, which was
Shirley Kramer,
pretty scary to me. Their standards
a registered nurse,
of protocol and care are very loose
volunteers her time
compared to how they are here,
these days to help
is somewhat driven by litiga-
patients.
tion. I would see a non-licensed per-

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