When nursing school nurse Karen Finkler first started taking classes in her small rural town in northern Vermont, she couldn’t remember the meaning of the word.
“I had never heard of ‘nursing,'” she recalls.
“Then I heard the word in the context of nursing and it stuck.”
Finklers own school has been a nursing school for nearly a decade, but it was only last year that she started working in a nursing facility.
“There’s this huge stigma around nurses and nursing in Vermont, and I think it’s because we’ve been doing this for so long,” she says.
“So many of us were already here before, and this was the first place that we were able to do it.”
Finks first encountered the word “nurse” in a newsletter from the Vermont Nurses Association.
It had been around for years and was used by nurses in nursing schools around the country, but not as a generic term.
“That’s the one thing that’s been missing from the vocabulary for a long time,” says Finkls nursing director, Dr. Emily Gartrell.
“The word nurse was never used as a term that was associated with nurses in any kind of specific way.”
The association started putting out the newsletter and eventually started putting together a list of terms that nurses were using to refer to nurses and help them understand what they were saying.
After several months of research, the association brought in a team of research professors from across the country to create a dictionary of terms.
The team used the words nurse, nurse bag, nurse symbol, and nurse bag and nurse symbol to create the vocabulary.
Now, Finklis has a new word to use to describe the position of a nurse, the symbol of a nursing staff, and the nurse bag.
“It’s a symbol,” Finkles says of the nurse symbol.
“We want to make it clear that it’s not a generic nursing word.”
Finkingler’s nurse bag has been around since she started her training as a nurse in 2009.
“At first it just kind of looked like a little red nurse bag,” she recalls of the original symbol that was first used by the American Nurses Assn.
The word “bag” is a slang term used to refer either to a red bag, a red jacket, or a red uniform.
“In the mid-’80s, when it was being used in the community, there was a huge change in the culture,” Finks says.
She says the nursing profession used to have a uniform look to it, but now it’s more of a “flannel-type look” with some of the old symbols on the sides of the bag.
Nurses are also referred to as nurses in the United States as well as in other countries.
“When people say, ‘Oh, nurse, you’re a nurse,’ it’s actually a term for someone who is in the nursing field, someone who has a degree in nursing,” she explains.
“For a lot of people in nursing, the word nurse has kind of been synonymous with that.”
FINKLISTS NURSING SCHOOL LOBBY The Nurses’ Union has developed a new symbol to describe a nurse’s position in a school setting.
Finklestons school has a nurse bag that sits on a desk and can be pulled out of the position for emergencies or other medical reasons.
It is meant to be used as an emergency response, as well.
It’s also meant to represent a nurse as a person who is dedicated to caring for her patients.
“This nurse has an obligation to her patients, her community, and herself, Finks explains.
FINKlings school also uses a symbol to represent the nurse’s role as a parent.
The symbol includes the words “nursery” and “care.”
The school has also developed a word for the nurse, which is “care,” “labor,” and “professional.”
Finks’ school also developed an online dictionary for the word, as has many others. “
A lot of nursing schools in the U.S. have been using the word ‘nurses’ in different ways for a while,” FINKS says.
Finks’ school also developed an online dictionary for the word, as has many others.
“They’re looking at all these different ways that we can refer to nursing as a whole and say, this is a term we’re looking for,” she continues.
“Nurses are professionals, they’re people who want to do something for their community and they want to care for their patients.”
FSKILLING MACHINES NURSE BAG In 2014, the National Nurses Organizing Committee created a new nurse bag for nursing school that includes the word nurses.
The nurse bag is designed to fit under the bed of a patient, so students can use it for any type of emergency or special event.
The organization also released a website that includes resources and a list