What is at stake:
The negative Impact of Healthcare Politics
Feb. 23, 2011

A surgeon tears out of an operating room red-faced, and extremely aggravated. He proceeds to stomp down the hallway with a vengeance; his destination, the nurse’s station. He works up all his anger and releases it into the face of the charge nurse. “My God!" he clamors, “you have got to have some of the worst underlings in the history of this hospital! Do you ignorant people realize what is at stake here! ” All the while the nurse continues to treat the recovering patient whom the doctor left because he received the wrong instrument. When trying to justify his uproar the surgeon explains that “his license is at stake,” and he “does not have the patience for uselessness in his operating room.” Doctors and nurses are two groups of people in the medical field who share an almost homogenous objective, and that is to serve the patient to the best of their ability. Unfortunately, the politics between doctors and nurses interferes with patient care. It is a constant struggle of power within the walls of the hospital. Both with the idea that they are all knowledgeable; both with the belief that if in a hostile situation they are the victim, and both losing sight of the main goal: to treat the patient. Physician Executive Carrie Johnson writes, “the reduction of behavioral problems can only be corrected through early education for both physicians and nurses. This needs to be thoroughly ingrained during medical school. Bad behavior needs only intervention” (Johnson 2009, November). In order to better serve the public, personal matters must be put aside.
The hierarchy of the hospital often causes rifts between doctors and nurses. The idea that any one person is more important in a hospital is far from true. It is a common misconception that nurses work “for” doctors,