Image Conscious

I worked in a place where there was in effect a ruling clique. Members of said clique got the choice assignments and all the promotions while the rest of us (read: the people who made things happen) got the scut work and the crap schedules. The only solution I found was to leave.
I have a charge nurse working under me struggling with that very issue now. She is very happy performing line level work, but she has never quite mastered the skills necessary to be a leader and she is deciding whether she wants to continue with it. Unfortunately, taking a position you are not comfortable with is often the only way to get a raise, and some people not suited for leadership roles wind up in them as a result.

All medical organizations work the same but differently and it is hard to know until you get into that organization. No matter where you go, in or out of medicine/nursing, you will find the same kind of people that you will find anywhere else. People that gossip, are lazy, that get in your business, that write everyone up, just sit around a let others do their work etc. The problem is that we are dealing with lives and what we do can kill someone. People are the same everywhere. You just have to learn how to work in spite of them and how to put them in their place.

Nevertheless, it seems wrong to reward shoddy care and laziness by promoting the individual to a supervisory or managerial position.

As a staff nurse, I've always found it extremely difficult to take it seriously when an assistant manager known for calling in sick every Sunday morning and for shoddy care, messy rooms and laziness would attempt to take me to task for calling in sick the day I put my dog to sleep, forgetting to change my suction cannisters or not bathing my patient on an especially busy night.