So last night was the very last straw for me. I am a new RN, been working for 5 months now. I get along great with everyone, except for this one particular charge nurse. Everyone I've talked to holds the same opinion of her as me. She is known for being rude, condescending, treating people like they are dumb, lazy etc, making a huge issue and freaking out over EVERYTHING, being high strung.
I've been told she tends to target people.. and I guess I'm her new pick.. which I absolutely hate to go there, but several other nurses have told me they think she has it out for me, and I've had so many say they were completely willing to stand up for me if it comes down to it.
I love my job. I love the unit I work on, as long as she isn't there. Its like a completely different place to work when she is... the environment is tense, and stressful, whereas when she isn't and someone else is charge (or the other charge nurse is there) it can actually be fun.. we all get along, everyone has a great sense of humor, we laugh together and joke around all night (while getting our work done) help each other out and support each other.
I've tried to just stay away from this particular nurse. I don't talk to her, if I have questions I find someone else, I take a ship and chart back in a corner to avoid her, and basically just spend the shift trying to avoid her in every way possible. Last night at shift change I was supposed to be getting a transfer as part of my assignment. Sometimes they take awhile to come so I went about my business, doing my assessments and passing meds for my other patients (I had 3 others plus the transfer, and the other nurses had 4 each with a couple who went home early in the night... so a couple of nurses were sitting at 3 also.) As far as I knew we only had one admit come, because I honestly don't pay attention unless they tell me I'm getting one, or if it seems really busy. We may have had two. Either way, on the board, it didn't look like I was getting skipped over for an admit, it just didn't look like it was my turn yet. So about 8 pm rolls around, no transfer yet. I asked a couple of the other nurses if I was supposed to call about it, or if they call when they are ready to bring the pt out. The other nurses said that the unit would call when they were ready to bring out the patient, and not to worry about it. I figured the charge knew the transfer hadn't come yet because there was no telemetry on the monitor where we'd put the pt's name in and all of that. So I went about my business again, passing my 8pm meds, charting etc. At about 1045pm I noticed on the tele monitor that they'd discharged the pt out. I figured charge did it, since the pt never came. So I go out for my break, and come back to find the charge nurse all kinds of mad and chewing me out at the nurse's station about sitting with 3 patients since shift change. I told her I thought she knew, and she went on and on, and then told me then I could be the one to go home. Ok, fine with me, I guess, even though I know it wasn't my turn as I just went home early because of low census last week. So I finish my stuff up as she is sitting there giving me dirty looks, and shaking her head. Like I purposely sat there all night with my 3 so I could avoid admits. You know what? If she was any one else, I probably would have said something about the transfer not coming, but she is so totally unapproachable that I just flat out don't talk to her unless absolutely necessary. And if I had gone to her and said "oh hey, btw, my tsf. hasn't come out yet" I guarantee you she would have totally freaked out and somehow I would have been made out to be doing something wrong, and it would be something that she'd act like it needed immediate attention and take up a ton of my time when I needed to be taking care of my other patients. And you know what, if everyone was busy and we were getting admits left and right, or if it looked like I had been skipped over for an admit I would have brought it to her attention. But we weren't busy. Everyone was caught up and just kind of hanging around on some downtime.
Another nurse pulled me aside before I left and told me that she went around to every single person there and went on and on about how I had only had 3 patients since shift change, and how she was going to write me up etc.
Or like the other day, when she made me out to be an idiot and slacking off because I was off for 6 days and when I came back we had some new skin protocol thing going on that I had no idea about. She was so condescending, telling me "oh yeah, you had something in your box telling you about it and that there was an online learning thing to do. Don't you check your box? You should have known about this already." I said I didn't have anything in my box, and that I didn't know anything about it." To which she rolled her eyes and acted like I was completely full of crap. Guess what happens through the rest of the night? EVERY other nurse came to it on the charting and every one of them said "what the heck is this?? When did we start new skin protocol and charting??"
I am to the point of refusing to work with her. I'm going to talk to the dept manager on Monday. I will not deal with this woman any more. Either they can schedule me so I work nights she doesn't, or I can transfer to another floor, or just quit and go to a different hospital. This is totally ridiculous. I go to work and work my butt off all night. I dont slack, I don't take shortcuts, I ask questions when I'm unsure, I'm learning still, but I haven't made any huge errors, and I'm catching on at an appropriate rate. I don't leave stuff for the oncoming shift, I get along with ALL of the staff (except for this one), I help out the other nurses even when I don't have the time, I don't complain about getting admits, or scheduling or whatever, and my patients have for the most part been complimentary etc.
Hi.. I'm a new nurse (started working 3months ago) , should I tolerate bullying by the senior nurses because I often ask questions about the hosp routines mostly and I sometimes do not realize Im not endorsing everything and forgets to complete stuff on the chart occasionally?
i know it can suck,(writing out every little thing) but you need to doucument specific incidents and make a copy for yourself and one to give to your unit manager. some people just enjoy power trips. sorry about your night. i hope that you are able to work things out.
Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.
I have worked for people like that. You should talk to your manager as soon as possible and also provide her with a written complaint. If you are union, you should pass a copy of that letter to your union rep. Make it clear that you will not tolerate her behavior any longer. Request that you have a meeting with her and your manager together. If the problem continues, you just hang in there and continue to document what she is doing to you. DO NOT DEPEND ON YOUR COWORKERS TO BACK YOU. They say they will support you but don't bet on it.
As for assignments, she must not be on her game. It is her responsibility to know what is going on with her unit, the status of assignments and where the next pt is going to go. It is her responsibility to assign patients based on rotation and what is going on with everyone in regard to the load they have at the time. It is not your responsibility to go to her and give her a status check of how many pts you have. She should know this at all times.
This is a woman who is in great need of customer training and some teaching with regard to how to properly supervise. How long has she been doing this job? She sounds very burned out. You got to learn to stand up to her and to put her in her place. These kinds of situations are a real pain in the ass.
[Or like the other day, when she made me out to be an idiot and slacking off because I was off for 6 days and when I came back we had some new skin protocol thing going on that I had no idea about. She was so condescending, telling me "oh yeah, you had something in your box telling you about it and that there was an online learning thing to do. Don't you check your box? You should have known about this already." I said I didn't have anything in my box, and that I didn't know anything about it." To which she rolled her eyes and acted like I was completely full of crap.]
She sounds like she is very passive aggressive and completely unprofessional in how she deals with conflict. People like this don't handle confrontation very well, they'll just ***** about you to the rest of the staff, roll their eyes and be sarcastic because they lack the courage to speak to you directly. We have someone very similar like this at my work who is so passive aggressive that if any of us directly confronts her about the problem she will run off in tears. While I don't like to do this to anyone I will not put up with her sarcastic comments about me and everyone else.
If you want to deal with the problem then my advice is to ask her if she has any issues with you or your work performance and if so then how you can resolve any problems she has with you.
Farmer Jane
281 Posts
Wow, what a professional suggestion.