Bullying online is NOT harmless

[Dianna11]

Those who put down posters, based on how long they have been on AN , or for any other reasons...

Did it ever occur to you that people come here to vent/ask questions???most don't care to please trolls, they are here to communicate and get helpful feedback, not nasty posts .

I came into this field because I love helping ppl. I honestly hope that none of those nasty nurses will attend to me or to my loved ones. It's scary.

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

Now, "Dude".

Isn't the proper gender-specific term "Dudette", klone?

I am merely an enquiring mind who wants to know.

Nothing more.

I think over the past few years "dude" has become more neutral, like "guys." Like, I can go up to a group of chicks at work and be like, "Wassup guys?" and it's fine. I think I could alternate with 'dudes' and it wouldn't be a thing.

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

It's the chasm of being new and being experienced and a tad salty (and, that saltiness is usually earned). With that saltiness comes a thick skin and a different perspective on life. For example, I'm in the middle of planning a wedding. I'm gay and I and my fiancé have a very carefully curated guest list. I just got into a semi-argument with my father about not inviting several of my cousins who happen to reside in a deep red state (and who I haven't talked to since I was a child -- over 17 years ago). My mom apologized for the stress and told me to keep my head up but I told her that, really, considering I spend my days with dying kids this stress isn't really a bad problem to have and I'm not really even stressed about it.

Seeing the worst of people can make you very insensitive to the mundane problems (ahem, NON-problems) of every day life. Remembering how terrifying nursing school seemed at the time makes me laugh and, while I can still relate to the stress of being a nursing student, some of the entitled complaining and whining is ridiculous and deserves a little salty snark. But, bullying it is not.

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

Dude, you seem to be perseverating on bullying and nurses "eating their young." I just looked at all the threads on the subject you have started.

Who hurt you?

It was that peer who told her that she flat out didn't like her and scoffs at her asking a lot of questions during lecture.

[AliNajaCat]

It was that peer who told her that she flat out didn't like her and scoffs at her asking a lot of questions during lecture.

Oh, WELL, then. Rejoinders, anyone? Perhaps we can help with that.

"Isn't it lucky we don't all have to like everyone we interact with! It's great practice for work later."

"If I knew it all already, I wouldn't have to sit through lecture, right?" (this is, of course, assuming that you actually did the reading and remembered the stuff from earlier lectures)

[Here.I.Stand, BSN, RN]

When I saw this title, I thought maybe another teenager committed suicide after being goaded to online

[elkpark]

When I saw this title, I thought maybe another teenager committed suicide after being goaded to online

Nah, it's just some allnurses participants with hurt feelings ...

[heron, ASN, RN]

Nah, it's just some allnurses participants with hurt feelings ...

"Hurt feelings" seem to be the only diagnostic criterion for bullying, these days, which makes the whole subject difficult to impossible to talk about productively.

Most "bullying" scenarios presented here revolve around hurt feelings with posters unable to stop crying and paralyzed by anxiety, resulting in accusations of bad work performance if not actual termination. Any attempt to get clarity on what actually happened is dismissed as "harsh". Any suggestion that the injured party might be misunderstanding or even contributing to the events is castigated.

There's no question that words and obvious attitudes can hurt and damage the target ... verbal abuse is just traumatic as any other kind and mobbing does occur in all kinds of settings, not just nursing.

But there's a dark side to that coin that I refer to as the "abuse excuse" and we've all seen it. It's the mediocre student blaming failure on classmates' eye-rolling, instructors playing favorites or not being invited out for coffee with the "in-crowd". It's the dangerously ignorant co-worker blaming poor job performance on the way a preceptor behaves, causing inability to learn and a paralyzingly fear of seeking help. You get my drift. "Somebody made me feel bad, so I can't be responsible for unpleasant consequences or my own subpar performance."

Somehow, such destructive pressures are supposed to excuse a poster's own shortcomings ... but the pressures on the so-called "bully" are almost never mentioned. If they are, they are dismissed as irrelevant: "It's their job to nurture me" "NETY NETY NETY" "Where's the compassion!"

The demand seems to be that we, as nurses, are obligated to make the poster feel good, regardless of her/his own behavior or contribution to the bad dynamic. This is practically the definition of co-dependence and is dangerously unhealthy response, especially for professional caregivers. When I see attempts to shame or guilt-trip responders into such unhealthy behavior, I have to ask, who's the real bully here?

[Wuzzie]

Heron I think you win the Internets today!

[NurseLauraM]

This may be a bit off topic, but I find the excessively used term, "bullying" to be incredibly tiresome and juvenile. While I understand that the definition has broadened significantly over the past few years, the recent misappropriation of the term to such minor offenses, especially by adults, belittles the experience of those who are truly being abused or harassed.

[smartnurse1982]

Just a comment.

I think many people use bullying when the really mean "micro-aggression",which I happen to see a LOT of.

People have intuition,and most know when they are singled out.

Let me give an example:

There was this older nurse who thought I had just graduated from the ADN program.

She never wanted to anything I had to say during report.

I found out why some time later.

My intuition led me to look up her name on the BON.

I had been a nurse for 10 years at that time,and she was the nearly new grad(2 year post) even though she was older than me by 2 decades.

[heron, ASN, RN]

Just a comment.

Why do some people have a hard time accepting that others could get bullied based on appearance,personality,or even religion?

Where do you get that from?

[elkpark]

Just a comment.

Why do some people have a hard time accepting that others could get bullied based on appearance,personality,or even religion?

Has anyone here suggested that it's not a possibility? I certainly have no problem accepting the idea. But I also think that a lot of what gets called "bullying" these days isn't really bullying, as underlined by the examples of real bullying described earlier in the thread.