Words I Hate IV

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Health Care Provider


Let me clarify. I don’t hate the noun “Health Care Provider.” I don’t wanna sound like a “Get off my lawn!” kooky krank. I’m a writer, after all, and I love words. All words – their sound, their rhythm, the images they convey. Their genealogy, so to speak, be they Latinate or Germanic or something entirely else, and all that that brings to the table. I love words, even the way they look. And yes, I realize that this may make me sound kooky, but in this regard, I don’t care.

It’s the way words are used to convey ideas that just grate on me that I don’t like. And it’s more than just ideas that grate – it’s ideas that attempt to change, replace, and destroy the wonderful, useful, life-affirming aspects of our Judeo-Christian heritage. And to be completely honest, a lot of it has to do with militant feminism.

Anyway, I’m banging away on my laptop a few weeks back, the radio playing softly somewhere behind me. A commercial comes on, and, between thoughts, I’m listening to it and it catches my attention. It’s something about either the health care bill or some current health issue – that’s not what I’m listening to. I hear this nice-sounding lady talking about the issue, and she smoothly says this phrase: “As a mother and a health care provider, I …”

Wait a minute. Something does not sound right.

I can buy that the actress is portraying a mother, intentionally so. The sponsor is going for the heartstrings, and that’s okay.

But, why the phrase, “health care provider”?

By definition, she provides health care. Unless there’s a third category I’m unaware of, she’s either a doctor or a nurse. (She could be a medical technician of some sort, like a CT-scan operator, but I don’t think that’s what the commercial’s sponsor was trying to convey.) She can be either a doctor or a nurse. In this era of women’s emancipation, of which I have absolutely no problem, I think that if this was a real individual, she’d be proud to say she was a doctor. Wouldn’t you? But in the commerical she labels herself as a “health care provider.”

So I immediately thought: What’s wrong with the word “nurse”?

I’ve known something like two or three dozen nurses over the past year. Not a single one of them introduced herself to me as a health care provider. They would say, “Hello. My name is Mary, and I’ll be your nurse for today.” I even had three male nurses, who refered to themselves the same way. Apparently there is no problem with the word “nurse” in the nursing industry, unlike, say, “stewardess” was a few years back in the air travel industry.

The message I took away from the commercial is that someone has a problem with the word “nurse.” Why, I have no idea. Using that spidey sense us writers have with words, when I contemplate “nurse,” I see this:

Angels.

I have never met a nurse who was ill-tempered, inconsiderate, angry, selfish, bitter, negative in any way. They have always been, to me at least, selfless and concerned only with the well-being of their patient under their care. The most angelic of those I’ve met helped me to my feet one night after surgery. I was shaky, and began coughing uncontrollably, and my sutures ruptured. Blood splattered on the floor. This woman who didn’t know me at all, immediately thrust her bare, ungloved hands against my wounds and pressed to stop the bleeding, while getting me back in bed, rebandaged, and cleaned up.

So, yeah, I guess I have a problem with anyone who has a problem with nurses. Even if it’s just a problem with the word, “nurse.”

There is nothing wrong or demeaning with the word “nurse.”