Bullied psych nurse commits suicide

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A very sad story of a psych nurse who was bullied at work and hung herself.

NHS nurse hanged herself after being 'bullied at work' | Daily Mail Online

The worse bullying besides being threatened to be killed or "assassinated" by psycho managers or a coworker *cough* is the gossiping and character assassination. Sweet Jesus. I remember I was one week or two from going on my annual vacation back in 2012, and my coworkers including my manager made up stories I was retiring to the Philippines and stated I was a "flight risk" like WOW!!!!??? Flight risk as in a criminal about to run away from the country? LOL. Then this other instigator coworker of mine's was saying I was too old to get a job there blah blah etc etc and I needed up to date pictures on my resume. Uhh..I was going to Tokyo back then to propose to my then GF and coming back to work after my vacation 2 weeks later since you know, I had a good current LVN job and a mortgage to pay. LOL. So freaking funny. Yeah, I complained to the union and I think HR if I recall. Hilarious. Of course, you can guess this was a toxic workplace and got retaliated on for complaining about being HARASSED. I think we had HR sit down with us numerous times along with the union about our "morale" problems lol. I'm an idiot for not suing when I look back. And there were other crap going on since then too. So, I laugh when people say bullying doesn't occur in nursing.

Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.

I don't think too many people are saying bullying doesn't occur. It's just that there is no universally-accepted definition, so "bullying" is whatever anyone says it is.

We've all been targets of bad behaviour. Some of it probably even constitutes bullying. It's just no use speculating what caused someone to end her own life when we don't have the whole story.

It's a very sad situation, but I can't muster up any righteous indignation without more information.

1 Votes
25 minutes ago, TriciaJ said:

I don't think too many people are saying bullying doesn't occur. It's just that there is no universally-accepted definition, so "bullying" is whatever anyone says it is.

We've all been targets of bad behaviour. Some of it probably even constitutes bullying. It's just no use speculating what caused someone to end her own life when we don't have the whole story.

It's a very sad situation, but I can't muster up any righteous indignation without more information.

I read ya. But man, some of these PROFESSIONALS are bordering on criminal acts (felony)than just ticky tacky mild personal beefs. Correction, what they did was a criminal act.

Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
10 hours ago, Section8UpX68WM6 said:

I read ya. But man, some of these PROFESSIONALS are bordering on criminal acts (felony)than just ticky tacky mild personal beefs. Correction, what they did was a criminal act.

Of course. We can huff and puff about bullying in general, especially when it sinks to the level of criminality. That still does not shed additional light on the subject of this thread. We don't know what caused this person to take her life and probably never will.

Specializes in Peds, MS, DIDD, Corrections, HH, LTC, School Nurse.
On 8/16/2018 at 10:52 AM, Sour Lemon said:

I don't trust her perception of being "bullied " or given "the worst shifts". The headline suggests a "work" issue, but there are plenty of hints along the way that suggest something more extreme and long standing.

I agree, Fiancee did say she had threatened suicide "30 times; after arguments". Sounds like she may had other issues outside of work.

3 Votes
Specializes in IMC, school nursing.
On 9/13/2019 at 4:36 AM, Section8UpX68WM6 said:

Ha. I like how you have quotes on the word bullying like it doesn't occur. Buddy, just a year ago, I was orientating in this clinic and one of the senior LVNs at this clinic was talking crap on how she was going to set me up. Right, I'm kwaaazy and I just imagined that right? Better up the dose on that seroquel I tell's ya. Your son's friend works in health care? BTW, do a search on bullying on this site alone and tell me how many nurses here are complaining about that. Next, go on your favorite search engine or You Tube and look that up and get back to me. If enough people are reporting it, you gotta at least give them the benefit of the doubt instead of labeling them as crazy.

No, she is in high school. She went to my school and was able to observe her and she frequently came to my office, as we had no counselor. I believe you may have been at the lower end of your class, as you obviously don't know how to inference context from the written text. Thankfully you probably only had one class that needed that skill. I was talking about his friend and it was in the same sentence, the bullying referred to her. Once again, I believe there are more avenues for bullying these days, but the intolerance of those to deal with it is not a healthy thing for our society. Snowflakes are real, and we are in for an avalanche if we keep going.

1 Votes
Specializes in Psychiatric and emergency nursing.
On 9/18/2019 at 12:50 AM, Section8UpX68WM6 said:

The worse bullying besides being threatened to be killed or "assassinated" by psycho managers or a coworker *cough* is the gossiping and character assassination. Sweet Jesus. I remember I was one week or two from going on my annual vacation back in 2012, and my coworkers including my manager made up stories I was retiring to the Philippines and stated I was a "flight risk" like WOW!!!!??? Flight risk as in a criminal about to run away from the country? LOL. Then this other instigator coworker of mine's was saying I was too old to get a job there blah blah etc etc and I needed up to date pictures on my resume. Uhh..I was going to Tokyo back then to propose to my then GF and coming back to work after my vacation 2 weeks later since you know, I had a good current LVN job and a mortgage to pay. LOL. So freaking funny. Yeah, I complained to the union and I think HR if I recall. Hilarious. Of course, you can guess this was a toxic workplace and got retaliated on for complaining about being HARASSED. I think we had HR sit down with us numerous times along with the union about our "morale" problems lol. I'm an idiot for not suing when I look back. And there were other crap going on since then too. So, I laugh when people say bullying doesn't occur in nursing.

Depending on your ethnicity and age, I could see where these comments may have been insensitive or even racist, but bullying or character assassination? Not so much.

1 Votes
Specializes in Rural Health/ Emergency Room.

We need to remember the insecurity of not fitting into a group of nurses, nightshift, plus if she was emotional herself. Bulling happens all the time in our profession, don't sweep it under the rug. What is sad is no one came forward to get her the interventions she needed.

The issue of suicide in healthcare workers has been discussed as a big problem today.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20180508/doctors-suicide-rate-highest-of-any-profession#1

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/389999-american-health-care-workers-are-committing-suicide-in-unprecedented

This is an issue that should be given more attention by our institutions. I think a great deal of it is due to the high pressures involved in the field. Healthcare worker mental health should be of primary importance given these statistics.

1 Votes
On 10/10/2019 at 12:25 PM, ThePsychWhisperer said:

Depending on your ethnicity and age, I could see where these comments may have been insensitive or even racist, but bullying or character assassination? Not so much.

Here's another long time nurse that can acknowledge that BULLYING does occur.

Specializes in Psychiatric and emergency nursing.
17 hours ago, Section8UpX68WM6 said:

Here's another long time nurse that can acknowledge that BULLYING does occur.

I never said bullying doesn't exist. Please don't attempt to twist my words. If you truly were bullied, my apologies. But bullying is a term that, just like nurses eat their young, is used far too often and many times inappropriately. To me, those sound like terrible, racist, and ageist jokes. Am I saying they were in the right to make those jokes? Of course not. I'm also not saying that you didn't have every right to be upset about it. And if you were really in a situation where multiple managers and a co-worker made legitimate threats to kill you, I'm curious as to why you continued to work there?

On 7/3/2019 at 11:34 AM, Kooky Korky said:

At first I figured there was much more going on in her life than just working with a bunch of witches.

Then I read the comments here.

WOW!, I feel JUST the same way! Well said, and pretty sad. These are the responses of other nurses. WOW!.

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