Campaign to educate Paul Krugman

Is nursing menial?

Educate Paul Krugman about the cognitive level it takes to be a nurse!

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman thinks nursing is "menial," not "cognitive"


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Message:*	Dear Mr. Krugman: I am writing about the "Take a Loved One for a Checkup Day" campaign. Every September, the Tom Joyner show promotes the campaign with its former name of "Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day." Eight years ago, nurses convinced the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health (OMH) to change the name of its campaign to "Take a Loved One for a Checkup Day" because the "Doctor Day" name excludes the advanced practices registered nurses (APRNs) who are central to providing care to the minorities the campaign seeks to serve. Myriad research studies show that the care provided by APRNs is equal to or better than that provided by physicians. So we do not understand why you would continue to use the "Doctor Day" name at the expense of nurses who you exclude, when instead you should be thanking them. Often, in minority communities,Dear Professor Krugman: Please reconsider your February 24, 2017 New York Times blog post listing "nurses" as an example of those who perform "menial work dealing with the physical world." You contrasted nursing with work that has traditionally required college, and you observed that "the point about the relative [technological] displacement of cognitive versus manual jobs seems to stand." In fact, nursing is a distinct health science, and all nurses need a university education. Hundreds of thousands have graduate nursing degrees. Nursing includes complex drug calculations and patient surveillance as well as advocacy, teaching, public health, and other "cognitive" roles. Extensive research shows that better nurse staffing saves lives and improves patient outcomes. Most types of nursing do include physical tasks, such as touching a patient, but even those tasks tend to be linked to nurses' advanced skills, such as psychosocial care or assessing a critical patient's minute-to-minute status. For almost two decades, the world has suffered from a deadly nursing shortage driven in large part by the kind of stereotyping that your blog post exemplifies. I understand that you teach at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. Perhaps your colleagues at the Graduate Center's Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing program--scholars with doctorates in nursing--could provide you with more information about what nursing really is. Please publicly apologize and explain the true place of nursing in the modern economy. Thank you.
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