Condidence

[aprice884]

I have been a nurse for 14 years. I am very disappointed in how nurses treat each other. I've worked with several nurses who expect you to prove yourself before you are accepted as a nurse. It seems like if you don't brag, seem over confident or arrogant you are considered inexperienced. I love medicine and patient care but I am tired of how rude nurses can be to each other! I have met some nurses who are kind and encouraging but there have been very few! I am quiet and don't feel like I need to prove anything. Please offer some encouragement. Recently a staff nurses actually told a pt I hadn't been a nurse very long and was bad mouthing other nurses! I still feel no need to correct her. I just want to do my job and be left alone!

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

Can't really say if this will make you feel better, but I don't think this is unique to nursing (but we might see it more?). I used to work in the business world, and colleagues could be quite cutthroat! Frequent suggestions made to higher-ups that So-and-So really didn't know what she was doing, she was too new, she didn't really come up with that great idea, it was Miss Thing Herself who had that idea. Discussed at meetings in the open, or quietly in the hallways. Backstabbing as a way of life!

It doesn't make it easier because you're dealing with it now, I guess I'm just saying that anytime you're in a profession that rewards the appearance of superiority over actual superiority/excellence, you're going to see it, I think.