Have You Ever Wondered?

Today is, or rather, was, International Nurses Day.

We have to ask ourselves – why is there a need to have an international nurses day? There isn’t, for example, international lawyers day is there? I certainly hope not.

The simple truth is that nurses are, bar none, probably the most under-rated, undervalued and underpaid professions in the world. The only other occupation that comes close in this sense is the teaching profession.

Anyone who has ever broken a leg, had haemorrhoids, had their tonsils taken out, given birth, had teeth taken out, had an operation, or whatever, knows first hand that nurses are not only an integral part of the medical profession, but they are life savers at making you feel as comfortable as possible. They don’t only heal you physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. They know when to say a calming word in your ear, they know when you need a tap on the shoulder, and they know when is a good time to change your bed pan. They know when you need a good laugh, and when you need a good cry. They prepare food, clean, work with probably the grumpiest clientele imaginable, they brush with death and disease at regular intervals, yet they are paid less than most professions. Why?

There are many other professions that are under valued as well. I’ll name a few here : a) Teachers, perhaps not under valued, but definitely underpaid, b) Garbage collectors, very undervalued, and in fact their profession is so notorious that some parents warn their children that if they don’t study hard enough… c) Miners d) Policemen e) Firemen f) Farmers g) Gardeners h) Butchers … well the list goes on.

These are the people who do all the work, they go thru the hard yards so that the rest of us can live comfortably. Yet, no one gives them their dues. Why is that??

On the other end of the spectrum, on the top of the pyramid, so to speak, there is a whole horde of people who do basically nothing and get paid the big bucks. Management. Corporate heads. Marketing executives. Sales executives. CEO’s. Board members. The people who sit in cushy offices who get paid millions and millions of dollars to make decisions about the company – if they make good decisions they get paid a lot, and if they make bad ones they get paid even more and leave the company with a nice golden hand shake while everyone else is screwed up. As they say, a corporation is the means to obtain personal wealth without personal risk.

In the middle of this, there are a whole bunch of people who get paid proportionally (say engineers and doctors), and a whole bunch of people who create jobs by creating work for themselves. Read that as the accountants, HR people, finance people, lawyers – basically all the bureaucratic stuff. As another saying goes : The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.

So, to recap, we live in a system where all the people who do all the hard work are at the bottom and are getting screwed, while most people in the middle  are getting paid to create extra work for everyone, and the people at the top earn all the big money by doing basically nothing.

Just lovely.

And yet we choose so openly to live within such a system. A totally unfair and unjust system. I wonder why?

But before I leave, I want to say a few parting words, a consolation if you will, to all those nurses out there. I believe I have made a mistake earlier in equating unvalued with underpaid, for if you could convert all the tears of joy, all the smiles of gratitude, all the thank-you cards, all the hugs of appreciation, into money, each nurse would have caverns of gold.

Thank you nurses, around the world.