Nurse Ratched's Nursing Values

Nursing began as a profession in the classical era, four thousand years ago, and has since evolved through many eras all the way to today’s present day – the year of 2016. Throughout these hundreds of years the role of nurses changed many times; first being seen as a lowly profession in the world to what it is today, a profession with the utmost respect. Florence Nightingale was responsible for the birth of professional nursing due to her ability to draw attention to the profession through her acts during the Crimean War. During Nightingale’s time nursing values were established and were required to be held by every nurse employed. Today Nightingale’s nursing values can be found within modern nursing alongside with newly developed values that

Nursing values according to Weis and Schank include caregiving, activism, accountability, integrity, trust, freedom, safety, and knowledge (Weis & Schank, 2000.) All of these values are the fundamentals of what a nurse is and what a nurse should carry out when caring for patients and interacting with the community. Throughout the film very little of these values are ever seen demonstrated by Nurse Ratched and what is seen is rather the opposite of these values. Proper caregiving is scarcely seen throughout the film by Nurse Ratched and it is truly only seen when she informs the patients that it is time for medication, but even then she does not truly provide care as she is not the one to provide the medications to her patients; she just stands by and monitors whiles another nurse hands out the medication. Some may argue that the therapy session Nurse Ratched holds is caregiving but in reality these therapy sessions is just a way Nurse Ratched is able to assert her dictatorship over these patients and strike fear into their hearts. This is seen in one of the very first therapy sessions in the film when Nurse Ratched persists on about one patient’s suicide attempt even though it is clear by the patient’s reaction that he is uncomfortable and is vulnerable (Douglas, Zaentz & Forman, 1975). This example verifies Nurse Ratched’s inability to create a trusting patient-nurse relationship between herself and the patient and her inability to make the patient feel safe and have a sense of freedom because all she really does is persist and torment the patient – which is conducting the opposite of a nurse’s