Record of harassment (hello again gwenith)

[Husband]

Does anyone know the policy about keeping a record of unproven claims of harassment at their own hospital?

I made some posts on this forum some time ago about my wife, who is a nurse in a Melbourne public hospital being falsely accused of bullying by another nurse and asked for your advice (titled Bullying & Promotion). A special thanks to gwenith and Token Male who helped a lot.

The nurse who made the false claim against my wife is a known bully who left her previous hospital due to claims made against her by all of her staff and she now has had many complaints lodged against her from nurses and patients here. Two nurses have taken leave because of her and a cohort bully.

HR advised my wife that the matter would not be pursued but that the claim would be held in a locked cupboard indefinitely and that should another claim be made against my wife it would "ring alarm bells". My wife saw this as a threat and asked for the claim to be destroyed or for the claim to be fully investigated. HR said that they are unable to destroy the claim due to policy and that they would not investigate further as the claimant has not requested it (refused mediation).

HR policy is to place a proven claim in an offender's file and destroy it after 12 months if no further claims are lodged. A claim that is NOT proven, however, is placed in a locked cupboard in HR but held indefinitely.

My wife asked, "Why is a proven claim destroyed after 12 months and an unproven claim held indefinitely?" to which HR replied " Some of the offenders were repeat offenders and also we need a record of how the matter was handled should a claimant take action against the hospital". She then asked, "Then why aren't the proven claims filed with the unproven claims after 12 months instead of being destroyed?" to which HR replied, "You should just move on and external counseling is available if you need it". My wife now thinks she is considered an "offender" in need of "counseling" and is really ticked off.

Is this record keeping common policy in hospitals or is it just the policy at my wife's hospital?

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

As I posted before you might find it worthwhile to try to make it a win/win situation with HRM. THEY don't want to look silly and will blame you if you put them in that position - on the other hand you do not want to make it look like you are guilty. Pushing too hard could simply, by itself do that. Could be time to back off just a little to show that you are ameniable.

[Torachan]

Would it be possible to hear how this all ended up? I especially liked the advice about documenting everything.

[Husband]

It hasn’t ended.

One of the cohort bullies spoke to another nurse like a dog and that nurse has lodged a harassment claim. Also a group of nurses have jointly submitted a letter of complaint to HR against this bully as recommended by the ANF. It will be interesting to see how HR treats this matter, as the bully is senior management. I bet it won’t be the same way they treated my wife.

Reprisals so far have included some unfair rostering (unnecessary late/early, nights, swapping and requests not granted) by the other bully and some childish exclusion by both bullies such as arranging meetings when nurses being bullied are not rostered and not including them in correspondence. As I said in the previous thread, it’s a facade, everyone pretending to be civil and talking about teamwork while keeping dossiers like the KGB to trip each other up.

Unfortunately, if someone is documenting everything you do then so must you. We are buying a filing cabinet.

[Husband]

Would it be possible to hear how this all ended up? I especially liked the advice about documenting everything.

Hi, This is the wife now who was falsely accused of harrassment. Nothing has happened despite my attempts to clear my name. I have spoken to every person who I thought could help, including the CEO who actually stated that the particular person who set me up has a history of this behaviour. I continue to work on the UNIT but have been excluded from a lot of my usual resposabilities. Unit meetings occur when I am on leave and I am asked toattend. Due to the fact that I have a busy life , I always send my apologies.She continually tries to assert her authority and even has the ordasity to ring me at home about a trivial matter.I have been advised to say nothing to her which is extremely difficult.She does rostering and has ensured that I get opposite shifts and a lot of ones that I dont want. Roster has been used to punish me. All this is normal behaviour for this person. I discussed her past with HR and although they also know about this ,they can only deal with the particular complaint, and what has happened elsewhere is irrelevant. THIS PERSON IS USED TO WORKING in this SORT OF ENVIRONMENT. My other collegues are very wary of her and frightened of her.

She can be very intimidating and has been accused of being a bully at another hospital whilst holding a senior position. WILL THIS EVER END!

[Husband]

Its a bit confusing referring to bully, cohort management bully, and so on in this thread so if it’s not considered offensive by the mods, I’d like to assign the following codes:

The cohort bully in management is now to be referred to as "Madam Stalin" as she is an egotistical dictator who likes to favourites and wants to purge her tightly controlled regime of all dissidents.

The known bully who lodged a false claim against my wife is now "Agent Felix" as she is the eyes and ears of the dictator of the regime and the cause of mass terror amongst its people (No, not named after the cat but Felix Dzerzhinsky, who was the founder of the KGB).

My wife is now "Comrade Molotov" because she was a longstanding, valued and loyal member of the regime who has now fallen out of favour with its dictator. She is also a bit volatile about the matter.

Boy. It sure is boring at work today.

[Husband]

Hey Comrade Molotov, we really need to spend some more time together at home and stop just meeting here.

Shouldn’t you still be asleep after night duty?

If you are working again tonight, perhaps we can try cyber sex? I don't know exactly what it is but it sounds better than nothing.

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

Okay it still comes down to

Put up with it

Change it

Get out

Number one is not an option really as these people will not elt go a target - not unless there is a juicier target in sight (i.e. someone else steps on thier toes). At this point you cannot expect any support from your colleagues in this situation - they will have gone into survival mode and "better her than me" will be operating - they might be sympathetic but do not expect anyone to throw themselves in the path of the bullies. Worse is if they start operating on "If you can't beat them join them" and that too can happen even unwittingly.

Change it - What I did for my bully was stand up to her in a face to face confrontation - showed her that no matter how much she screamed and ranted and raved I was not going to get upset - I sat calmly and at each accusation simply said - "I object to that". I also proved to her that she could NOT win by using one of her strategies against her. Unfortunately this relies on you waiting for her to go that bit too far.

Get out - this is one of your only choices and better sooner than later. Believe me if you leave others will because no-one will want to become the next target. In fact that might not be a bad ploy let everyone know that you will be leaving and wonder who she will target next - careful though this can backfire as it may force some to choose to "suck up" so as not to become the next victim.

You are documenting everything - have you thought about sending HRM monthly updates???

[bulletproofbarb]

Would it be possible to hear how this all ended up? I especially liked the advice about documenting everything.

At the time of the original post about Husbands wife being called a bully ect, the same happened to me. It was awful because the person who made the claim was a friend who actually became quite possessive and so I asked her not to contact me and to just work together as we do with other colleauges. As time went on, she became more suspicious and put in a complaint about me, said I was bullying her. This was shortly after she had been accused of bullying another nurse, plus, prior to all that, she had attended a bullying workshop as part of the nurse graduate programme.

Anyway, as it happened, I was told about it and was quite distressed at the time. I said I would discuss it with her and apparently she refused because she felt it too distressing. I never got to see the letter, that is what irked me the most. Anyway, I spoke to the union and to cut a long story short, I spoke to the manager and told her I had and what they said. As it happened, the manager told me, but I have no evidence, that she threw the letter out as she felt it was written by the other girl because of our conflict. I then left, not for that reason, and last I heard the girl involved missed out on her preference for ward rotation on the graduate programme, which she initally had been told she had but they had too many staff and had to make a choice and she had not been chosen. She ended up on a "really awful ward full of veges" (her words)and I was the one smiling.

As awful as that may sound, what goes around comes around and I am glad she missed out. I have required references since I left and have had no trouble getting them and they have been fine.

Although, I still feel REALLY angry about the whole situation, I have learnt a big lesson from it all and would never wish it on anyone.

Take Care and my best wishes to Husbands Wife.