Gastroenterology Nurses
Gastroenterology nurses are those that look after people with diseases of the digestive and intestinal systems. It’s probably one of the nursing specialties better suited to those who, on our EQSQ personality tests, are more to the balanced or even systemizing end of the spectrum. For, even though nursing as a whole definitely suits those towards the empathizing end of the spectrum as shown by those personality tests, this specific part of nursing includes a lot of diagnosis as well as treatment and care. Endoscopy, for example, is now often done by nurses (that’s sticking a glass fiber tube down to have a good look at what’s going on). So, a slightly odd thought for you, that in an overwhelmingly empathic career there are still parts that suit the systemizers.
There’s one other thing I really rather like about gastroenterology: it shows us quite how fast science is developing. We tend not really to notice that things which we didn’t know about 20 years ago are now known about. We can see it in cell phones or computers, but medical science doesn’t occupy our consciousness in the same way. But 20 years, 30 years ago, the main part of gastroenterology was the treatment of ulcers. And the treatment was by diet. Which had, err, no effect. For the cause of ulcers was a bacteria, which could be eradicated by antibiotics. A Nobel Prize was awarded for this discovery: in the process of proving it, the scientist deliberately infected himself with the bacteria to get an ulcer and then was cured by the antibiotic. Who knows what diseases will be simple to cure in another 20 or 30 years?
September 26th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I never knew this. I still believed ulcers were caused by stress and other lifestyle factors. I very recently told someone he was going to give himself an ulcer (because he’s such a stress-case), and he agreed. Why isn’t it more common knowledge that bacterium causes most ulcers? Could this be one of those instances when we, as a culture, get so stuck on idea, so much it becomes an ingrained part of our jokes and everyday conversation, we don’t want it to turn out wrong?
What of other ailments connected to stress? It’s believed to be a cause of everything from heart disease to asthma to colds and flu. According to this blog, http://my.opera.com/Yulz/blog/2007/03/06/health-problems-caused-by-stress, over a million people a year are diagnosed with stress-related illnesses.
While I can see the possibility of stress affecting one’s sense of well-being, can it really cause especially the more serious diseases? Of course, there would have to be more underlying reasons for the disease. Also, I’m always curious about our current stress levels. Are we really more stressed out than previous generations or do we simply talk about it more? Do you think our obsessing about stress makes it all worse?
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:43 pm
The intelligence about stress is that yes, it most certainly does cause a lot of diseases. However, not necessarily directly. It’s more to do with the way that it weakens the immune system.
For example, at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident, there was a very small release of radioactive gases. By tracking wind speed etc the scientists were able to work out who might have been exposed. They were rather surprised to find that cancer rates went up in the entire area around the plant, not just in those areas exposed. Because people don’t have the full intelligence about radiation (small amounts do no harm, might even do good) even those who weren’t exposed worried, this caused stress and thus cancer.
So much so that by looking at the cancer rates in the area you couldn’t see where the exposure had been: the cancer risk from the stress was greater than that from the radiation exposure.