[ler_]

>It is a sever cultural problem with the nurses. They should be more educated than this.

Well, I think nursing culture is very difficult to understand from the outside. It was for me before I went into nursing school. Also, it is not exactly about education. For example, in nursing, there is a great focus on having initiative. I remember that in nursing school it was much more praiseworthy to have done many skills during clinical time (e.g. inserting a urinary catheter, inserting an NG tube) than to be able to enumerate the safety risks associated with those very same skills. It was very odd to me, but it was the way things were. Even working in the field there is always a great focus on "getting stuff done", so to speak.

Therefore, although I think education is a natural thing to bring up when one wishes to argue that x should be happening, it doesn't really apply in the bigger context of the profession. I believe this also has to do with a lot of other "why aren't x people doing y thing" types of arguments. In nursing, practice - and the willingness to do things - will always be more important than any deep understanding of theory. Also, let me add that I don't mean to say that every nurse is reckless. Still, this doesn't change the fact that there are some really strange aspects of the working environment. No matter how well one practices one's individual role or how knowledgeable one is, they will still be there. And, ultimately, I think these things have to be taken into account when we want to understand what is driving a group of people to make certain choices.