Examples of times you have been bullied in nursing profession

casper1 · Apr 22, 2010

I was bullied by a Doctor in the ED. I had been floated down to work in the ED had never worked there before. ED was very busy and I was given a nine patient assignment. One of the patients was there with abdominal pain, the patient was not in any acute distress he was laughing, walking around, vital signs were stable. I was never told that the patient was going to be going to surgery.

I was placing an IV in another patient when a tech walked in and told me a Doctor was at the Nurses station threatining to get someone fired, I told her I would be there as soon as I was finished. When I got to the Nurses station I discovered I was to be the victim of his rath.

He wanted to know exactly why his patient was not in the OR that minute, ( incidently the Doctor was dressed in golfing clothes, no wonder he was mad being pulled off the course ).

I told the Doctor I was unaware the patient was going to Surgery but I would start his pre-op paperwork and get him ready. Not good enough he wanted him in Surgery now!

In our facility Nurses do not take patient directly to the OR unless it's life threatening ( even then OR has to give OK that they are ready ) with routine cases transport come and brings patient to the OR. I told the Doctor I would prepare the patient for surgury , but I could not take him directly to the OR. Doctor yelled at me in front of the whole ED, other Nurses, Patients and Doctors telling me I was incompitant.

I dropped everything I was doing at the time and prepared the patient for Surgery, I told the Doctor I could not directly take him to Surgery until I get the OK they are ready for him. I called the OR to tell them the situation they stated they would be sending transport as soon as they could, however patients surgery was not an emergency, so he would not be at the top af there list. An hour and a half later transport arrived to transfer patient.

TabithaB · Apr 22, 2010

I worked for awhile doing sleep studies..............i wasnt a sleep tech but they needed a kids nurse to just do the children (Government policy). I was actually bullied by the morning cleaner of all things!!!! I would strip all of the leads off the children and lay them all out on the bed so that they wouldnt get tangled as i cleaned them one by one. She would come into the room and start stripping off the bed linen whilst the leads were still on there!!!!!! My leads would go everywhere and were such a pain in the behind to untangle!!! She would complain under her breath about "new" staff and how slow they were!!!!!! One day i had enough..........as she grabbed a sheet to whip it off i grabbed the other side and said........"You know what.........i am busy working too.......so why dont you go bug someone else and i will strip it off when i am done and then you won't have a reason to complain about my work speed ever again". Well of course she became my best friend after that........and i had to watch her do it to every new person that walked through the door for the next 2 years!!!!

casper1 · Apr 22, 2010

I have worked on my current unit, 32 bed med surg ortho unit, for 5 years. For the entire time I have worked there I have not been able to get wall suction devices for patients because the hospital could not afford them. We had a few, but not enough for every patient who was on aspiration precautions. I have been fighting this battle for 3 years since the hospital has finally made some money. I was again told the suction devices were coming but they never arrived. Finally, I wrote a very nice, respectful email to my manager and to the CEO of the hospital asking what the status was of this project while respectfully reminding them of the risk of not having these devices. I was very quickly hauled into the office of the new nursing director, who I had never met, for a major ass chewing for going around the chain of command. I am 55 years old and this woman, who is much younger than me, made me feel like a child. I have as much education and more experience (management and otherwise) than she does and she treats me this way. I have just felt very defeated since this incident. It has certainly done nothing to increase my motivation at work and in fact I am considering moving to another hospital.

The only reaso she was upset was that you made her look bad. As the manager she should have been the one seeing that the wall suction units were available. :yeah:

casper1 · Apr 22, 2010

Thank you for this Post. It's time to end lateral violence and bulling in the workplace. It's counter productive and a wast of time. If all the time and energy involved in looking for ways to stick it to each other was spent on patient care hospitals could cut length of stay in half.

Rabid Response · Apr 22, 2010

There is a nurse on my unit who tries to mess with me whatever way she can. She is known for being grouchy, but she takes special pleasure in harassing me. Fortunately, she works days so, unless I have to give her report, I can usually avoid contact with her. Still, she will search me out. One day, I had popped into a room to hand something to a nurse who was assisting a doctor with a line insertion. I didn't even stick my head in the room, just my arm, but this nurse saw me and started yelling loud enough for the whole unit to hear, "YOU NEED TO WEAR A MASK! PUT A MASK ON!" I was already away from the room, but she followed me around the unit, still yelling. Finally I turned to her, smiled, and said, "I heard you the first twenty times." Another day, she interrupted my report to another nurse by yelling my name across the unit over and over. Finally I stopped report and walked over to her. "You need to log yourself out of this computer! LOG OUT!" I had not used that computer all night, but I checked it. I was not logged in, but an MD with a name similar to mine was. That MD was sitting a few feet from the computer. I told that to the nurse and walked away.

One day she got the thrill of her life when she caught me in an actual mistake. I had made a charting error, one that was not dangerous but kind of funny. Actually it turned out to be really funny because this nurse printed out a copy of my error from the computer and circulated the copy to all the critical care units. I really didn't care because I thought the error was funny too, but I know that she wasn't laughing WITH me on that one. One day she yelled at me because an MD entered an isolation precaution room (behind me where I couldn't see) without a mask or gown on. Apparantly my RADAR should have alerted me, and I should have stopped the MD from entering the room. She was still berating me when the MD left the room and then was so worked up that she laid into the MD as well. The MD was speechless as if no one had ever spoken to her that way before. Her mouth was still hanging open as that nurse turned to walk away. "Don't old doctors talk that way to young doctors?" I asked her. "Never," she said.

Strangely, this nurse amuses me more than she bothers me. At least her attacks are mostly in the open. She even used to talk sh*t about me to other nurses when I was within earshot. Nowadays she hasn't got an audience for her rants since I'm not a newbie anymore, and (I think) most of my co-workers like and trust me.

The most insidious form of bullying isn't really technically bullying. I have not experienced it, but I have watched it used on others, and it never fails to devastate the victim--shunning. No one will be outwardly mean to the victim, but they will refrain from having anything more than the necessary interactions with that person. There is really no recourse against it since you cannot prove that anything is being DONE to the ostracized person. The closest I've come to feeling what that was like was working one month in a new unit where 80% of the nurses spoke Tagalog with each other, even when I (non-Tagalog speaker) was present. Those were the loneliest weeks of my life, and I'm pretty sure that those nurses weren't even trying to be mean; they just didn't know me or care one way or the other for me.

luvmyyorkie24 · Apr 22, 2010

Thank you all who have posted so far this will help my presentation! It's great to see the different stories and even views on "bullying" because some people might think of that term as something that happens on a playground or in grade schools but in reality older "mature" adults "bully" and create hostile work environments for others. Its unfortunate that statictically the nursing profession experiences a great deal of lateral violence or "bullying". Thank you all again for your posts!

nursefamily · Apr 20, 2016

I have been a nurse for over 20 years. I work in a rehab hospital and share an official either a nurse who bullies me every day. She has had me repremanded for hurting her feelings by not saying goodbye, etc. She reminds me that anyone who crosses her gets terminated and that she regularly recieves bonuses for fudging reports. Now she following me and a friend at work when we go to lunch, she is very jealous and possessive of this lady. She regularly searched through my desk and things, I know, because she tells me. Very few people see this side of her....therefore, she is managers darling.....

westieluv · Apr 20, 2016

When I was a student nurse back in the late '80s, I was in the room with one of my first assigned patients and my instructor was standing behind me. The patient had a G-tube and I was supposed to give his meds through it while she observed. I was soooo nervous and at one point I blurted out, "I'm sorry, I've never done this before!" and at that, I felt a fist slam me between the shoulder blades, obviously my instructor's. Once we were outside the room, she got up in my face and hissed, "DON'T YOU EVER SAY YOU HAVEN'T DONE SOMETHING BEFORE IN FRONT OF A PATIENT!" I apologized and as soon as I could get somewhere I alone I broke down and cried. She was only about ten years older than me so I felt really stupid and incompetent.

I look back on that now and I can't believe that I just put up with it, but I was so timid back then, and I was so afraid of not passing if I stood up to her.

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Apr 20, 2016

When I was in nursing school, i worked as a CNA in a hospital. There was a nurse on my unit who was a control freak. She was charge nurse one day, and she assigned a 30-something year old woman being admitted with chest pain to one of the nurses. I was working with that nurse, and so I setup the room for her. She wanted the patient to have a lift sheet. We were running low on linens that day, and the charge nurse did not want to call and ask for more. She decided that since this woman was so young, she shouldn't have a lift sheet. She told me to put it back. So, I did. The nurse getting the patient scolded me, and reminded me that this was to be her patient, not the charge nurse's patient, and she told me to put the lift sheet back on.
The charge nurse came in and noticed I put it back, and she went ballistic, screaming at the top of her lungs at me (as she liked to do to everyone). She screamed "when I tell you to do something, you do it! It doesn't matter what the nurse getting the patient wants!" Then she took the lift sheet and whipped it at me, slapping me across the face with it! Real good way to save linens...now it had to be put in the laundry! Turns out, the patient was very large and in so much pain, she HAD to have a lift sheet.
Do you think that charge nurse apologized to me or the other nurse? Hell, no! She went out of her way to humiliate and terrorize everyone in her quest to be in control of the unit. She always got her way, but only because everyone was afraid of her!

You had a legitimate criminal case here of battery. You could have pressed charges on this woman, who is legally NOT ALLOWED to strike you with an object.

Parakeet · Apr 20, 2016

Thank you all who have posted so far this will help my presentation! It's great to see the different stories and even views on "bullying" because some people might think of that term as something that happens on a playground or in grade schools but in reality older "mature" adults "bully" and create hostile work environments for others. Its unfortunate that statictically the nursing profession experiences a great deal of lateral violence or "bullying". Thank you all again for your posts!

Why is it always "older" nurses who are considered bullies? I'm starting to think that the question should be asked, "why do younger nurses eat the older, more experienced nurses?" When you think of younger nurses who feel entitled to red carpet treatment, then complain if everything does not come easily to them; this is more often than not today.

Some of these responses are true examples of bullying, which should not be tolerated. However, if you intended it or not, this particular post's wording sounds like bullying only comes from older nurses. Try reading nursing school stories from 1900 - 1960s .... I am sure many students graduating today would have considered the strict instructors or nurses from those times to be bullies, however, they turned out many fantastic nurses. It is called discipline and hard work.

Thanks!

Horseshoe, BSN, RN · Apr 20, 2016

Thank you all who have posted so far this will help my presentation! It's great to see the different stories and even views on "bullying" because some people might think of that term as something that happens on a playground or in grade schools but in reality older "mature" adults "bully" and create hostile work environments for others. Its unfortunate that statictically the nursing profession experiences a great deal of lateral violence or "bullying". Thank you all again for your posts!

Why is it always "older" nurses who are considered bullies? I'm starting to think that the question should be asked, "why do younger nurses eat the older, more experienced nurses?" When you think of younger nurses who feel entitled to red carpet treatment, then complain if everything does not come easily to them; this is more often than not today.
Some of these responses are true examples of bullying, which should not be tolerated. However, if you intended it or not, this particular post's wording sounds like bullying only comes from older nurses. Try reading nursing school stories from 1900 - 1960s .... I am sure many students graduating today would have considered the strict instructors or nurses from those times to be bullies, however, they turned out many fantastic nurses. It is called discipline and hard work.
Thanks!

Parakeet, I don't read her post at all in the same way you did. She says "older" "more mature adults" in comparison to her earlier example, i.e., children "on a playground" or "in grade school." A new, younger nurse right out of school would nevertheless be considered the "older, more mature adult" in this conversation because they are not on the playground or in grade school. They are adults in the working world, where, according to the OP, bullies can be found in disturbing numbers. I do not see where she states that older nurses are the only ones bullying, and the new nurses are innocent victims of bullying.

Dogen · Apr 20, 2016

When I was being trained on telemetry I said something - I forget what, but as I'm generally friendly and boring it was probably not much - that upset my preceptor. Instead of talking to me about it she tried to get me fired. For two years. During my orientation she would see things on the monitor and not mention them to me, then when we were giving report she'd pull the oncoming person aside and say, "Dogen didn't tell you about this because he didn't realize it was ectopy..." Then she tried to get my orientation lengthened because I was making so many "mistakes." Eventually she started telling the charge on our shift that I was "the most dangerous person she'd ever worked with" and totally unsafe, which is when I found out - that charge RN was the first person to tell me what was happening. When I asked my preceptor she exploded, screaming in my face that I'd never work at that hospital if she had anything to say about it.

I talked to my manager, HR was brought in to mediate... meanwhile my preceptor called staffing and told them to take me off the schedule (to which the staffing clerk said, "Who are you?"). Eventually 4 or 5 other people told stories about how she behaved. She told one person who had recently started dating that she should give up because she was too dumb for anyone to love and going to die alone. The nurse manager had no idea anything was happening, my preceptor was never anything but polite and kind when she was around and no one else had ever complained. My preceptor was sent to night shift, I survived.

Over the next year and a half she would occasionally alter my tele strips. We printed tele strips, stuck them on a form in the chart, and wrote little notes beside the strip about the rhythm (QRS, PRi, QTc, etc). She would peel my strips off, print new ones from around the same time with different measurements, stick them on the forms I'd filled out, then show them to people as proof that I was incompetent. That was what eventually got her fired.

I'm not sure this next one counts as bullying, maybe "attempted bullying." :) So one of the tele techs broke down a paper chart of a patient who hadn't left yet. I was sitting in the nurse's station near where the charts were kept and a nurse asked me if I'd seen the chart of her patient. I told her it had been broken down, and because I'm a nice guy I offered to put it back together for her since she was in the middle of a discharge. She asked me who broke it down, I (being a sly fox) figured she wanted to complain so I told her I wasn't sure, and offered to put the chart together again. She said, "I want to know who broke down my chart. You're sitting by the rack. You must have seen. I want you to tell me." I said something to the effect of, "It seems like you want to yell at someone, and if I have to disappoint the person who was trying to help you out by ratting on them, or you by keeping it to myself, I'm going to choose you." She took a step toward me, kind of looming over me as I was sitting, and screamed something about, "not being a team player" and "I better tell her who her problem was with because I didn't want it to be with me." So, I pushed my chair back and just... stood up. I'm over 6 feet tall, broad shoulders... a big dude. She got a little wide-eyed, took a step back, and stormed out.

I've worked with probably 200 nurses in my career, and those were the only people I've ever really had a problem with.