Nurses Assistant Pledge and Hippocratic Oath
by pediac (Member) - published: August 27, 2007
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The Nurses Assistant Pledge
And Hippocratic Oath

I earnestly promise to myself, God and the presence of this assembly, to diligently, under the supervision of a licensed nurse, provide basic nursing care to ensure the safety, comfort, personal hygiene, and protection of patients/residents in a licensed long-term, intermediate, acute care facility or as a Home Health aide.

I will refrain from performing any nursing services that require a professional nursing license. I will do all within my power to maintain and raise the standards of Nurse’s
Aide health care practices, and will hold in confidence all patients/residents committed to my keeping. With respect, dignity, and commitment I will administer care to the patients/residents delegated to me. With fidelity will I endeavor to aid the nurses in their work and devote myself to the welfare of those residents/patients committed to my care.

Author: Tonya Harrington, RN, MSN (April 28, 2007 ©#TXu-1362-233

Comments

The following comments are for "Nurses Assistant Pledge and Hippocratic Oath"
by pediac

Oh for heaven's sake!!!
I just commented on one of your poems, then noticed you'd also posted an "article" which I read as well but which I will refrain from commenting on altogether, and now this? This "blog"...WTF is this #$%%!?

Okay, fine, I'm calm now...

You (maybe?) teach nursing assistants and you came up with this self-promoting piece of garbage to post here as a blog?

Why garbage? Well, for one thing, your second paragraph should begin "I will refrain" and not "reframe". This is not a typo. This is an example of ignorance on the part of someone who holds a magisteriate degree.

Do you even know how many of the likes of you I have had to put up with in 35 years of nursing???Can't even write a memo without a mistake in it and they think they're smarter and more competent than us little "Indians". We have been creatively working in the trenches at bedsides with less and less staff/budget, etc, while you all just walk around wearing good shoes and carrying clipboards, creating paperwork for the rest of us to do, because you all have jobs but no actual work.

I come here to relax and enjoy writers. This is my day off, and here you are, personifying those I constantly need vacations from.

Now I know what posts to avoid at all costs!

Lucie Adams, Nurse, BA

(no, no BScN, and no MN, and none of that "touch not the incontinent patient" muck)

Grrrrrr!!!

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: August 29, 2007 )

And furthermore!
Now I know your name. Could be good. Could be not so good...

You'd better take off your international conference-issued nametag if you're gonna use the john between workshops and plenaries, 'cause I'm gonna steal your stall!!!

"...home health aid"??? That's AIDE, you dummy! And aid is a piece of equipment...

Pen! Well, cr^p, she pushed my last button, ya know? Glad this made you laugh and chuckle . I don't think there's ever enough laughter in this world... I need to visit other posts now...

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: August 29, 2007 )

comments
Hello responders to the oath. I admit that I have two type-0's and I thank you for pointing that out. The harsh comments maybe the way you are use to reviewing someones work, I am new at this and I guess I have to be ready to face harsh comments from others viewing my work. "igonrant, dummy", maybe, but hopefully I will get better. The pledge was just something we use at nursing pinnings for each level of nursing. I will revise. Thanks again

( Posted by: pediac [Member] On: August 29, 2007 )

Pediac
I get mean and nasty when I see poor usage of the language. You hold a magisteriate degree. You should make excellent usage of the language, yet you do not. This is not just a statement about you, though. It is also a statement about the University which admitted you into a postgraduate programme. Sadly, it seems that every insitution of higher learning is guilty of doing this nowadays...

I have to worry when I think about somebody like you publishing in Nursing Journals, for example, with such disregard for the language...Your mistakes here are not typos. A typo is an error resulting from your finger hitting the wrong keyboard key. "Reframe" has nothing to do with "refrain" which is the correct word. "Aid" is a verb or, if a noun, an item, an object, like a walker or a cane, whereas the person is an "aide".
This is high school stuff. And every bit as ridiculous and obscene as President Bush pronouncing "nuclear", "nucular". It makes him sound like a dummy.
Why anyone would want to look like, or sound like a dummy is beyond me.

When somebody educated writes like a dummy, I get mean and nasty about it. When somebody in the Nursing profession writes like a dummy, I get really ticked off. I take it personally. I take it as though all the readers here will now think of all nurses as dummies, because the (supposedly) smartest among them, those with magisteriate degrees, write like dummies.

Do not make nurses look bad, pediac, please, okay? Correct your texts before posting them here.

And yes, my comments will always be harsh to writers who are sloppy here, yet, in the real world, are in positions of "teaching" others.

Welcome to this site, but don't expect me to give you my most positive feedback when you haven't earned it.

I have been licensed to practise nursing in the Province of Quebec since 1972. In the decades since then, your ilk has crossed my path many a time, and, I must say, has left me largely unimpressed. So I am biased against you from the get-go.

Show me your best English and I will honour it with my best feedback.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: August 29, 2007 )

Respond to comments
Thank you again for your comments, I will take them and improve with them. My weakness is writing and I will give all serious writers respect and make sure things are picture perfect before posting again. The paper on ethics I posted was one I wrote during my studies, just wanted to get it posted. No offense taken, I understand, better serious writers or gifted writers, I am a novice and not real gifted. Thanks again.

( Posted by: pediac [Member] On: August 29, 2007 )

Cpmments on Hippocratic Oath
Responders to the Nurses Assistant Hippocratic Oath posting

First, I would like to say I do feel very embarrassed to have posted the oath without editing or having another person do it and I apologize, because some of the harsh names and comments indicated offensive to those who are serious writers. Secondly, I would just like to add that I am a novice at creative writings and just wanted to try my hand at publishing. I will make sure everything is “perfect” before I post again. Thirdly, just to give a little history of the Hippocratic Oath (see below). Medical doctors, Registered Nurses, Licensed Practical/Vocational Nurses and now Certified Nurses Assistants normally recite a pledge of nursing practice during pinning ceremonies and nursing graduations. The Nurses Assistants did not have a pledge, therefore I wanted to create one just for them from their scope of nurses practice code and the Florence Nightingale Registered Nurses Pledge and Hippocratic Oath. Maybe this may help the readers of this pledge, who are not health care workers understand the reason behind the writings. The following Oaths are used for all health care workers:

1. Medical Doctors Hippocratic Oath
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.
• The Hippocratic Oath Today:
Meaningless Relic or Invaluable Moral Guide?
• The Hippocratic Oath—classical version

• Doctors' Responses
• Non-Doctors' Responses
• Introduction

One Night in an E.R. | Meet the Doctors | The Hippocratic Oath Today
M.D. Specialties | The Producer's Story | Medicine Through Time
Resources | Transcripts | Site Map | Survivor M.D. Home

Editor's Picks | Previous Sites | Join Us/E-mail | TV/Web Schedule
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© | Updated March 2001

2. Florence Nightingale Registered Nurses and Vocational Nurses Pledge
The Nightingale Pledge was composed by Lystra Gretter, an instructor of nursing at the old Harper Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, and was first used by its graduating class in the spring of 1893. It is an adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians.
~~~
I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician, in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.

3. Now the C.N.A. Hippocratic Oath.

From A Short History of Nursing by Lavinia Dock and Isabel Stewart:
Appendix IV
The Oath of Hippocrates with Two Modern Adaptations
Sometimes Used in Nursing Schools
The practice of "swearing in" a member of a guild or profession is very old and is still continued as a tradition in some professional schools. The general trend of opinion today is against the requirement of any such pledge or oath. The examples quoted below are given for their historic interest.
The Hippocratic oath Was framed by Hippocrates, the Greek "Father of Medicine," in the fifth century before Christ. There are several forms of the oath. The following translation is taken from a copy published by the Journal of the American Medical Association:
"I swear by Apollo, the physician, and Æsculapius and Health,1 and All-heal,2 and all the gods and goddesses, that according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this oath and stipulation: to reckon him who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance faith him and relieve his necessities if required; to regard his offspring as on the same footing with my own brothers, and to teach-them this art if they should wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation, and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the art to my own sons and to those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath, according to the law of medicine, but to none others.
"I will follow that method of treatment which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious. and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked nor suggest any such counsel ; furthermore, I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion.
"With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my art. I will not cut a person who: is suffering with a stone, but will leave this to be done by practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter I will go into them for the benefit of the sick and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and further from the seduction of females or males, bond or free.
"Whatever, in connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with it, 1 may see or hear in the lives of men which ought not to be spoken abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.
"While I continue to keep this oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men at all times, but should I trespass and violate this oath, may the reverse be my lot."
The modified Hippocratic oath arranged by Mrs. Lystra Gretter for the nurses of the Farrand Training School, Detroit, was called the Florence Nightingale Pledge as a token of esteem for Miss Nightingale. It is sometimes ascribed wrongly to Miss Nightingale's authorship. Its relationship to the old oath of medicine is quite plain.
"I solemnly pledge myself before God, and in the presence of this assembly) to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all' in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of. my profession and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician in his work and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care."
Mrs. Cadwalader Jones, a member of the Board of Managers of the City Hospital, New York, is the author of another version of the Hippocratic oath. It runs as follows:
"You do solemnly swear, each by whatever she holds most sacred :
"That you will be loyal to the physicians under whom you serve, as a good soldier is loyal to his officers.
"That you will be just and generous to all worthy members of your profession, aiding them when it will be in your power to do so.
"That you will live your lives and lead your profession in uprightness and honor.
"That into whatsoever house you shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of your power, and that you will hold yourselves aloof from all temptation.
"That whatsoever you shall see or hear of the lives of men and women, whether they be your patients or members of their households, you will keep inviolably secret, whether you are in other households, or among your own friends."

( Posted by: pediac [Member] On: August 29, 2007 )

I 'heart' nurses
Hi pediac,
I forgive you your indiscretion. I also know Lucie, and she takes her work very seriously, and so she should- she gives her heart and soul to many individuals who will never be able to show her their appreciation, and most have family who are too over-wrought to pay much attention or appreciation to this tireless angel of mercy. I imagine you can relate.
Our Lucie is a magnificent writer as well, full of compassion and magnamity on all fronts.

We are all learning, and in need of instruction. I found your original post a sweet attempt, yet picked up very quickly on obvious mistakes (as in refrain-reframe).
If I put all my effort into a profession, I might be more judgemental about such obvious mis-steps- I will never have any thing bad to say about Lucie because I have "known" her (through this site) for several years, and she is all she claims to be and then some.
You are a newbie, and apperently hit a raw nerve, but don't get the wrong idea. Lucie is a wonderful soul.
I work as a home health aide, among other things. I care-take for an 88 year-old woman, but my care is without the benefit of any nursing, or medical value. I do have an abundance of experience with the elderly, and care for my sweet lady in ways that are essential for her spirit, and not her 'health'.

I have no oath to take. I have loved and lost important people in my life and strive to make my dear Madeline's life a little more pleasant by having someone bathe her and care for her with compassion and understanding. I am her companion and her caretaker. When more is needed, she recieves medical expertise.

I take my hat off to you, and to Lucie, and to all who give so much when so much is needed.
Please continue in your persuit of engaging in writing- it is a wonderful way of venting and of finding aspects of yourself that you may not have been aware of. Know, also, that some of us are very sensitive when it comes to our art and our passions.
We are a family here. We squabble, and we tell it like it is. Welcome.

-Elizabeth

( Posted by: emaks [Member] On: August 29, 2007 )

Comments
Thank you all for your comments about Lucie, I have been writing her and I too, agree that she loves writing and I hope to learn from her. All is forgiven and I will continue to try my hand at writing.....only with caution and perhaps Lucie can look it over before I post for others to view it. Thanks again

( Posted by: pediac [Member] On: August 30, 2007 )

*chuckle*
Made me laugh all over again. I was doing a google search looking for the post Lucie referred me to and couldn't find it. I'd forgotten about this ..

( Posted by: Pen [Member] On: March 16, 2011 )

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