Some of my best friends are bright, curious, knowledgeable RNs who are aware of the sort of general knowledge that one would hope everyone has to get by in the world.
Then there are the other ones ...
Like the RN at my friend's department who had the honestly-and-firmly-held belief that the sun and the moon were the same celestial body, appearing at different times.
But, my friend tried to demonstrate, look, there's the moon in the sky right now, and there's the sun.
She was in her forties and had never noticed this.
How does one get to adulthood with this kind of misconception about the basic way the world works? Even if you never looked up, even if you never had a class in basic science that included looking at a model of the solar system, it's not like the general culture is bereft of this fact.
What scares me is the incurious attitude that one has to have to maintain some levels of ignorance -- especially about a biological subject, when one's work is all about the care and repair of the body.
I've met doctors and med students just as ignorant about chicken biology or the biology of other animals -- BAD -- but the thing that scairt me most about several nurses, both mature and kids, is that they would ARGUE with me about what they knew for absolutely sure that just weren't so. The docs and med students have the good sense to be embarrassed about their misconceptions. Some of the nurses have gotten huffy and tried to be authoritative.
The specifics of reproductive biology for each species are all unique and weird, but basics such as pregnancy being (normally) required for lactation, and the sex/baby connection in higher animals -- this is not like rebuilding an engine block. This is like identifying a car vs. a tractor.
