Making your work visible in a way that distinguishes the roles of nursing and medicine is not bad-mouthing either physicians or their profession, or revealing shameful family secrets. It's vital, she and other nurses' advocates say, for nurses to become political, speak out and to claim their rightful credit for the caring, expertise and knowledge they bring to patients. Back at St. Mary's, recruiter Serge Garneau knows that could be good if it improves morale among nurses on the floor and helps hospitals like his keep the nurses who are already there. Over his 24 years in nursing, he has seen some bad times, including the shortages created when thousands of anglophone nurses, frightened by language and politics, left the province in the early 1980s. But nothing compares with today.
Society has to figure out how to attract people back to nursing.
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