The NEW Nurse (Not the ones AOL speak of)

[walk6miles]

Here is my take on the new nurses today. Not all new nurses do this but, at the facility where I work - 80 percent have the following behaviour:

Consistently late to take report (20 minutes average).

Bring their "luggage" to work - fight with kids, husband, lover, married lover, most of the shift - don't these people sleep??

Show no respect to the patient, the experienced nurse and/or doctor.

Spend 90 percent of their time on the computer - and - as soon as the day shift leaves, the IPod or MP comes on either with or without earphones.... so they NEVER hear call lights, telephones, telemetry alarms.

Discuss their business or another staff member's business in the patient's room.

Hold the experienced nurse to public ridicule.

Make fun of this disabled nurse's disability (just happened this past weekend) AND the hospital is sweeping it under the rug.

Text message all night long.

[XB9S, BSN, MSN, EdD, RN, APN]

wow it sounds like you have had a horrible day, I have only ever once worked in a place where I felt unsupported by co-workers and managers alike, after our unit merged with another and staff from my old unit were in the minority.

Unfortunately I think if co-workers are allowed to get away with making fun and ridicule with management taking no action then the culture of bullying continues and those who are at the recieving end feel very alone.

[mpccrn, BSN, RN]

what's coming out of schools now a days makes you wonder......

[BookwormRN]

what's coming out of schools now a days makes you wonder......

whoa, whoa, whoa....

i just got out of school awhile back and let me tell you, i do not resemble these remarks at all!!!

these sound like some pretty immature, unprofessional people. if their parents held them to no standards and their bosses are the same, well, chaos will reign. you can believe that i would not put up with this behavior for two seconds. i would address the individuals myself; then work my way up. if no satisfaction were found, i would leave faster than you can say "see ya!"

you do not have to be a doormat!

[rndavu729, ADN]

I am a NEW nurse and would not think of acting that way, in ANY job.

[locolorenzo22, BSN, RN]

I agree....I just graduated from school at the ripe old age of 27....and I do not feel that I resemble these remarks at all. Why? Because I believe in WORKING while I'm on the clock, and I am there to do a job. Most people in my generation do not have that work ethic.

That being said, if people are not being held responsible for their behavior...nothing will change. sounds to me like somebody needs to document these things and talk to management about the issues. If nothing is being done, then maybe the job is not the right one anymore.

Oh, and on the whole ipod thing? One of the nurses I work with (53) brings his ipod to work, and pops it into a speaker system as soon as 9/10 PM rolls around. I've mentioned that I can hear it in rooms near the station, but I get "oh, it's not that loud. I can barely hear it." We're there for patients...wonder why we get noise complaints?

[natrgrrl]

Sorry to hear about your bad experiences.

There are quite a few students like that in my ADN program. I was hoping that those were the types that wouldn't make it through the program.

I can't count how many times that I was embarrassed by the actions and remarks of my fellow students. Why on earth would a student challenge the nurse she is working with? Once, I was literally standing with my jaw dropped when one of my classmates blatantly disobeyed the charge nurse during a fire, not a drill, because she had to get her assessments done! I apologized to every staff member I could find after that incident because I didn't want people to stereotype students from our school.

Here's my two cents: It's parents who should be held accountable. You know those disrespectful, obnoxious kids you hear your coworkers talking about? That is who we will be working with.

I hope things improve for you.:redpinkhe Actually, I hope they improve for all of us.

[hypocaffeinemia, BSN, RN]

So what you're saying is the new nurse is the same as the old nurse minus twenty years?

Note: my comment illustrates just how poor of a generalization this is and is by no means how I feel.

[oramar]

This is a managment problem. If people are showing up late for report chances are that managment knows about it. Problems like this tend to start out small then get bigger when people start to realize that so and so it getting away with such and such and start to pull tricks themselvees. The bad behaviors would not fly on a unit with a good manager. This is why I believe in units with 24 to 25 patients and a manager with only one unit to run. I have worked places where managers had two 40 bed units to run. Gee, I wonder how things get out of control?

[locolorenzo22, BSN, RN]

they eventually get caught coming in late too many times. We had one RN (been one for 15 years) who was NEVER on time. Always wrote in the time edit book that she forgot to swipe her badge. When the edits were audited, it was shown that she had 54 edits like that in 80 days! Makes it fairly obvious!

[inthesky]

where do these nurses find the time for texting or using an IPOD? I'm a new nurse and I wouldn't have time to slack off even if I wanted to.

[Asherah, BSN, RN]

what's coming out of schools now a days makes you wonder......

Yeah...makes you wonder about the validity of blanket generalizations.

If issues like this run rampant in your facility and management does nothing to quell them, you have a choice to leave for greener pastures.