Assertive versus Bullying

[SunDazed]

Lately, I feel like our managers are getting close to fudging the line between being assertive and being bullies. I understand that they are under pressure to provide a group of nurses for the shared governance committees, and many of our staff have just said no.

The other day one said something to the effect of "if you aren't interested in pursuing additional professional education and participating in development, then you might as well give up your license... after all you basically pledged to do this when you took your nursing oath."

What?!? Being a compassionate bedside nurse and following up on licensing requirements isn't enough? Now I must glow like the lantern?

It makes you wonder... what is their goal?

When I was in nursing school I remember seeing pictures of ER nurses in big cities that were allowed to have blue hair and tattoos showing. Not that I want to have blue hair... and none of my tattoos show... but I thought I was sort of entering a field that allowed a little bit of individuality. As long as you did the job and did it correctly and compassionately... and made a connection with the patients...

Right now the most favored nurses in our unit are former cheerleaders between 26 and 32 who will write whatever the boss asks them to write... say whatever the boss wants them to say... and then when the boss isn't looking break the rules they don't regard... the main one being not having your cell phone on the floor. The expectation is you will leave it in your locker. Yet, they hide in the back room to chart and regularly have the phone out texting away.

But my original thoughts were about being coerced into joining committees... you know pulled into the office and put on the spot to submit an application? How do you say no when you still have no idea what the review process is like? I got a taste of it one day when a manager pulled me into discuss a break issue and suddenly is digressing to discussing my flaws as reported by barely familiar coworkers? Really?

Then the cracks start to show... because they now realize you may not play every game their way? Just because I was coerced onto the committee, doesn't mean I will participate in a way that doesn't meet my own personal idea of integrity. You did like that I used the word integrity in my application, right Mr Manager? I don't just say it.. I try to live it.

Maybe any one not in the former cheer camp will not play along? Bullied? Yea... well.. I will just keeping watching the job positings. It doesn't matter how good the pay if the enviroment is threatening. I don't know about you... but varsity cheerleaders at my high school could sometimes be mean girls.

[kaylee.]

In the end I think the only conclusion i can draw after this long roller coaster thread is that there is no way to prove this type of topic as "right" or "wrong", as we have all made some valid points as well as some irrational jabs over the ambiguity of language. ?

I guess it doesn't really matter whether it was "bullying" or not, but the topic at hand was more about

how to deal with an interaction at work that is "difficult" interpersonally...unfortunately we got a little side-tracked...?

[OCNRN63, RN]

Deleted

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

I stopped at post 19. You might have been pressured into working on a committee, but "bullied" into it? Nah.

I've had what I think of as a similar reaction to requirements/characterizations from on high. In my head, I'm all, "You gotta be 'effin kidding me." I'm surprised that you would deem her statement and your subsequent reaction as evidence of bullying. You were just ticked off by her wording. That is all.

If one sentence from a nurse manager about committee work makes you feel genuinely bullied, I also have to question your self-assessment of how thick your skin is.

[kaylee.]

I dont think anyone really wants to digress back into the was it or wasnt it bullying argument. But your analogy with pain actually drives the opposite point home that you are attempting to make:

The the subjectivity of pain is totally the same...The affective experience a person has in an interaction is completely subjective, and so pain being what the patient says it is a similar experience...how can you judge it from the outside?

If you try to define it is futile because it does not change how one experiences it. Although you were meaning to argue the other end, you offered great analogy to describe the subjectivity of social cognition...thanks ?

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

Except for baily, no one else that responded commented on their own experience of being intimidated by management. Maybe I am one of the folks who will leave nursing eventually, before retirement.

I don't get the games. I don't get the meanness. If managers are going to call me out on the Nightengale pledge, are they going to pick and choose what parts have merit for them? Are all these other commenters virgins? Does being a faithfully good nurse count? Is there literature on that? Where in the world is there anything in the pledge about being on committees or turn in your license? Maybe posting on all nurses in an anonymous fashion could be seen as mischevious?

Eject eject eject.

Ok, I'll share. A cardio consult where I work had the audacity to call me out on my ethics because I did not jump to pass on his recommendation for a newly-approved treatment for a high INR to the resident team. Mind you, he was not even the consult of record, he overheard my saying the INR and "one unit of FFP" during report, I had never even heard of the treatment...and he said I was " ignoring your ethical duty to your patient" by not passing on the rec.

Similar situation as yours. He had more authority than I, and he was trying to coerce me into doing something by questioning my ethics if I did not do it. I don't feel I was bullied, mainly because what he said was so full of ********! Instead, I asked him for some private convo and pretty much ripped him a new one...unprofessional? Maybe. But I was furious.

He later apologized to me, btw.

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

I dont think anyone really wants to digress back into the was it or wasnt it bullying argument. But your analogy with pain actually drives the opposite point home that you are attempting to make:

The the subjectivity of pain is totally the same...The affective experience a person has in an interaction is completely subjective, and so pain being what the patient says it is a similar experience...how can you judge it from the outside?

If you try to define it is futile because it does not change how one experiences it. Although you were meaning to argue the other end, you offered great analogy to describe the subjectivity of social cognition...thanks 

This reminds me of what one of my Drama Queen friends always says when she gets offended or takes something the wrong way, which is quite often. "Perception is reality." It drives *me* insane because it recuses her from the responsibility of stepping back, realizing that not everyone is out to get her, and address her own out-of-control paranoia.

I am NOT equating Sundazed reaction to my friend's reaction, but the "perception is reality" definition of bullying is so nebulous, not saying ANYTHING could be defined as bullying, e.g, "That nurse never says anything to me but just gives report and leaves. She never smiles. She never says hello. I'm afraid of her."

It's been said on this site, so I'm not just pulling the example out of my butt.

[kaylee.]

Perception is not reality at all. In fact, far from it, I would find it irritating too if someone continually used that expression as a blanket statement excusing her of any accountability in an interaction. Being stuck in such a mindset and never taking a look at your own emotional state would keep you from evolving socially and emotionally.

Perception is only one part of an interaction, the communicator expresses something, assuming to have some message to communicate. And there is the receiver, who takes in the message, and must apply meaning.

So the message may be perceived as it was meant to be, or it could be inaccurate.

I was just suggesting that perception is an inherent part of any communication, and can't be invalidated to that person. It is up to them to make meaning of it. You make a good point, that taking all things as reality is way off...i guess perceptions can help you or hinder you, depending on how flexible or inflexible they are.

[kungpoopanda]

As you are so keen on the Nightingale Pledge, OP, what do you think "I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession" means? I personally find the Pledge naive and infantile, but this line at least spells out one's obligation to the profession. It is not enough to be a caring bedside nurse, one must work for the furthering of the profession of nursing. One of the ways this is done is via participation on commitees.

[SunDazed, BSN, RN]

Well I brought up the Nightingale pledge because it was flung at me by the manager as rationale for joining committees. I am sure there are many versions of it in use. The one I quoted was from the 1890's? I am not even sure if it is the same version I pledged to...

Some might argue that the committees for shared governance promote the agenda of those who sell Magnet status to hospitals... which trickles down as more sales of nursing certifications and renewals... the point there being they make money off of it... There are a lot of folks in the upper reaches of administration vested in keeping Magnet going... but if the whole point is to empower the nurses from the bottom up.... and they can't get nurses to particiapte hospital wide... it seems like the cart pulling the horse.... so management has to work to fill the holes so they look good to their bosses?

How many Magnet hospitals are

there?

As of January 2013, there are approximately 395 Magnet Hospitals, which represents about 6.7% of the hospitals in the US.

http://www.mghpcs.org/pcs/magnet/Documents/Education_Toolbox/01_Intro-Ovrvw/Magnet_Overview.pdf

So can I conclude that only a very small portion of those in nursing even have the opportunity to join Magnet self-governing committees? How do all the other nurses further the profession? Committees may be one way, but it seems the participants might be more effective if there was real choice to join.

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

So can I conclude that only a very small portion of those in nursing even have the opportunity to join Magnet self-governing committees? How do all the other nurses further the profession? Committees may be one way, but it seems the participants might be more effective if there was real choice to join.

Committee work is only one way. In my opinion, it's often the least effective way to further the profession. Too many meetings, not enough action.

I'm float, so I am not pressured to join committees, but I have helped update a policy after a nurse confided in me that she got in trouble for not following it. Turns out she looked at our skills database and followed it, but it was contradicted by policy. The policy had no references, while the skills database did. I didn't have to join a committee to present it to the existing one. I've also volunteered to help author a grant proposal for our CHF QI nurse after a post from here (by GrnTea, I think) that explained a creative use of another nurse's grant to decrease readmissions.

Never joined a committee, don't have to, and still got stuff done. Committees look good on paper, but that's about it. At least where I work.