Nurse to nurse fighting/do we need a code of conduct?

I had one particular day from #&!@ in which a "veteran" nurse chewed me out. In front of my coworkers AND the patients.

I had walked into a mess, both of my patients needed CT scans, I needed to accompany them (ventric), and to top it off I got thrown up on. I ended up taking my lunch about 2 hours late, fine, whatever, I don't care. Staffing coordinator decided to give me a break and said they were putting an "easy" patient in my spot. Great. Well, I come back from lunch/dinner, whatever, and this nurse admitted the "easy" patient and just decided she should keep it since she had to admit them anyway. But what was coming into my spot? An unstable SICU patient. Arrrrgh.

Having an ICU background, this didn't bother me. But if I saw a coworker having a craptastic day, I wouldn't have pulled that with them. People saw my stress, and I generally just talked about how getting thrown up on is awesome

This nurse thought I was complaining about her and the SICU patient. Um NO. I was not. Seriously, it was mainly about the puke and the numerous road trips to CT, etc.

So she yells at me saying if I have a problem with her I shouldn't be complaining about her behind her back. ?????? Huh? I wasn't saying anything about you. Relax! However, it was exactly what I didn't need that day.

All I ever heard from the higher ups about the situation was "Oh, we heard what so and so did to you. Sorry about that. It's just how she can be sometimes."

Uh, excuse me? I can't imagine behaving like that to a coworker in any situation, but ESPECIALLY in front of the patients. She never bothered to apologized and seemed to believe her behavior was ok. I guess management didn't feel like dealing with her either.

That incident was kind of the tip of the iceberg and one of the main reasons I left that unit.