Nurses don't diagnose, therefore, it wasn't the nurses fault

Didn't she try to diagnose op with allergies? I'd say that's her fault

Yes. I meant if she was the one to diagnose then she was wrong, that's the doctors job.

Nurses provide education regarding what the doctor diagnosed.

Nurses don't go to medical school...

Nurses don't attend medical school, all they need is an associate degree and residency time (the duration of which I don't know). It's also not their job to diagnose and I would've asked for the doctor to come in and give a second opinion

Depends. If you are licensed nurse you do two years. If you are a registered nurse you do 4 years

the nurse said it was allergies- that's diagnosing. wrongly diagnosing can cost a life. had the doctor said OP had pneumonia and the nurse gave info on that, that would be different.

Nurses absolutely should not be diagnosing. They are not educuated to build differential diagnostic lists. That is nothing against them, physicians are trained extensively on this skill and it is not easily ascertained. Nurses often speculate with their physicians about what they think is going on, but physicians still enter the patients room with an open mind. In this case, there are details missing. Pneumonia is not a difficult case to diagnose. So that makes me think the physician didn't even enter the room, in which case it is entirely the physicians responsibility.

You just said based on doctors diagnosis. Don't get me wrong, I know nurses are necessary and are trained a lot, but everyone has even said based on doctors diagnosis. How the FML is written, the doctor DIDNT give the diagnosis, the nurse did.

Could have been a nurse practitioner. Also, you can be an RN with an associates.

I'm a nurse and in my country we study and train pretty much like doctors. To become a nurse you have to go to University for 3 years and study about 80 subjects, including anatomy, phisiology, biology, surgery, pharmacology, cardiology, neurology, gastroenterology, and even psychology, ethic and medical law. Nursing school is full time, with classes from 9 am to 6 pm every day. All classes are mandatory and you can't skip them or attend them online. There is also a mandatory clinical training in hospitals, 3 months per year, 8 hour per day where you work for free. Doctors do the same thing, but split over 6 years instead of 3 because they only have classes in the morning (4 hours per day). It's the same amount of work, but not compressed like in Nursing school. And yeah, most of us are able to diagnose diseases on our own, even though we are not actually supposed to do that. That nurse is probably from the US, where you only study a basic subjects for a couple of years without much of a training.

Nurse practitioners do diagnose & treat. All without the pt. ever seeing a doctor. I went to a doctor (only because my NP was out of the country) twice over 4 weeks with a lingering cough & congestion only to be told it was just a cold. My nurse practitioner diagnosed me 2 days later with pneumonia, bronchitis, & 4 cracked ribs! Everyone makes mistakes, but it still sucks. Thankfully it wasn't life threatening OP.

I was just kidding... Damn so much down votes and hate.

Yea totally sue them for the crucial life or death situation.

How often do you find yourself searching up the idea that you have something fatal when you actual just have a flu?

Misdiagnosis happens. Nurses don't diagnosis, it's the physicians responsibility.

Nurses aren't supposed to diagnose, but if you read OP's submission again, the nurse decided it wasn't that serious. They just sent OP home (or TRIED to send OP home) with a brochure.

I agree. My grandfather went to the doctors for dizziness and an Ill feeling. The doc said he had vertigo and would have to live with it. Turns out he had cancer and by the time he was diagnosed it was too late to do anything.

OP said they had the cough for 6 weeks. If they went to the doctor the first time in the beginning, their symptoms could have been milder than when they went weeks later. While doctors do the diagnosing the nurse had no right to be condescending.

OP said this was their second appointment in 6 weeks, meaning they could have only been coughing for a week and a half before scheduling an appointment.

@67 "...because I've had a cough for about six weeks." It says that it's their second appointment for a cough they've had for six weeks.

Pneumonia develops over time, what starts out as a cold can worsen into pneumonia (fluid in the lungs) but there is no specific germ or cause of the condition. OP could've had a regular cold that progressed instead of being fought off.

In most cases the cold is only lowering you immune systems ability to fight off infection. Allowing microbes to infect the lungs and cause pneumonia. So while there are multiple causal agents, there are some common ones the doctor could have tested for.

No kidding, I was thinking the same thing.

It is possible for lung sounds to be clear and then later change.

With my newborn she had clear lungs. That night she had full blown rsv with 77% oxygen. It happens.