I adore nurses. If I thought I could handle the math (or another round of schooling), I might become a nurse. I respect the profession and understand that 95% of the hands-on care provided by our health care system is provided by nurses, not physicians.

            That said (and I know this is going to irritate a lot of people), I think that the nurse who describes her- or himself as a “nurse writer” (or a nurse poet, nurse researcher, nurse attorney, and so on) is doing a disservice to both the writer and the profession. To me (and not to some of my colleagues here who are nurses, I hasten to add), adding “nurse” before “writer” is a bit of a cop-out. […]