Bullying

[pattyn]

I am researching bullying among O.R. personnel esp. attacking older r.n.'s. Any experiences?

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

Is this for school?

[jamieplusfour]

Yes, I had a terrible experience with bullying. I work in an OR with 12 rooms, doing 60-80 surgeries a day. There is a "click" that is friends with the manager. During my orientation, I was precepted by the "bully click". I almost didn't make it through my orientation because I was bullied, talked about, given bad reviews and offered no help in learning the job. I made it through orientation and since then after many people complaining about the bullies and a new OR director the bullying is being addressed.

Not a good start to a new job.

I hope this helps.

[GadgetRN71, ASN, RN]

I worked for a place that had a clique and a boss who encouraged the clique to do her dirty work.Ended up going to the union over it and it helped. I found out recently that people who had that specific position after me went through or are going through the same, so I know it wasn't just me.

[RNGuy12]

I've noticed that bullying seems to be more prevalent in the OR than in other areas of nursing where I've worked or observed. And if not bullying, then plain rudeness and disrespect. The perpetrators of such behavior in my facility have been the older, more experienced nurses to new nurses. Many preceptors mistreating their orientees. There is also bullying from techs to nurses and doctors to nurses, but by far it's the older nurses who seem to go out of their way to make new nurses miserable.

What's worse is a majority of the time the behavior is passive aggressive or insidious; they use indirect methods to bully and belittle and it makes it difficult for the bullied to report the behavior because the phrase "it's not what they said, it's how they said it" comes up a lot and the bullied nurse is seen as or feels overly insensitive or paranoid.

[springchick1, ADN, RN]

I've noticed that bullying seems to be more prevalent in the OR than in other areas of nursing where I've worked or observed. And if not bullying then plain rudeness and disrespect. The perpetrators of such behavior in my facility have been the older, more experienced nurses to new nurses. Many preceptors mistreating their orientees. There is also bullying from techs to nurses and doctors to nurses, but by far it's the older nurses who seem to go out of their way to make new nurses miserable. What's worse is a majority of the time the behavior is passive aggressive or insidious; they use indirect methods to bully and belittle and it makes it difficult for the bullied to report the behavior because the phrase "it's not what they said, it's how they said it" comes up a lot and the bullied nurse is seen as or feels overly insensitive or paranoid.[/quote']

But don't think new nurses are completely innocent either. You make it sound like they are mistreated by everyone but a lot of them mistreat people too. We have some new nurses that treat the techs and the nursing assistance like dirt because we're not nurses. Of course, I don't think a lot of it is bullying, I think a lot of it is entitlement and laziness.

[ORoxyO]

We've been accused of bullying our older nurses because our new manager actually assigns them to rooms and expects them to work. They claim bullying- we think it's just expecting everyone to pull their own weight. Can't win!