The problem is that snf/ltc nurses have a lot of patients, so it's difficult to know them all well unless you work that hall every single day. That can easily be mistaken for incompetence, when it's just ignorance through lack of time.

I'm certainly capable of mistakes, and I'll listen to questions or criticism until it becomes apparent someone's just trying to be an ass. That's professional courtesy.

After that point, I know every pt on my hall inside and out. I know their families, and family numbers by heart. They trust me, and I don't let them down. When I left my unit manager position to go back to the floor it was on the condition that I run the hall in its entirety so my replacement didn't have it so hard. As such, I scrub 24hr report sheets every morning. Everything that happens on my hall goes through me. MDs call me at home to see if something in off hours is a new issue, or just a nurse that got floated and thinks it is.

I agree with what you said, that we're there for the patients. If a paramedic is present I'm going to defer to them in that emergency situation, but I'm not taking any shit off a 3 month education emt. That's gonna be an Erin Brockovich moment right there. Two wrong feet and fucking ugly shoes.

I realize I'm ranting and I don't mean to. This probably isn't the place, either. But I do think it's an important conversation that needs to happen more often. I'm 18 years in the field now, ten of that in trauma surgery. So I've been in the ED and heard paramedics dismissed as "ambulance drivers" and that's disrespectful. I've seen it the other way around plenty enough, too. I think it's an easy enough area to fix, so long as we all stay in our lane and work together.