Counterweight Bullying With a Positive Attitude.

[kocurek]

Almost a year passed since I started my first nursing job. Like for many, new aspiring nurses, it was a very challenging, often stressful period.

When I told a colleague nurse that my faith in humanity is being tested on med-surg floor she reacted: "O! Yeah! Some patients really can be impossible". Well... I didn't mean patients. Although some can be difficult. Frustrated, or mentally broken, vent on you, or refuse to cooperate. We still are blessed. At the and of the shift we go back to our cozy homes and enjoy life freely, while many of these "difficult" patients are stuck with their miseries of chronic illness. It is very humbling.

It's the nurses (some) who test my faith. We are educated, reasonably healthy and mentally capable professionals. We should know better. Yet there are bullies on the hospital floor too. Not underage developing children, but grown up adults, to my disbelief. The bully is a young inexperienced, but overambitious nurse. She even bullied a pregnant coworker, exploiting her vulnerabilities. She kept intervening with her patients's care to showcase herself for the management. She also told the victim that she is a liability to us, because she doesn't get COVID patients, can't lift and so forth.

In the recent year almost all older experienced nurses left the night shift, and the bully became a favorite super-nurse of the management. She is precepting now new young nurses taking over the positions left by older generation nurses.

As the bully is training new nurses and assures her position on the floor, it raises my concerns that it will become a toxic work place. Although I am over twenty years older than the bully and incoming nurses, I have as little experience as they. The bully is going to stay and most likely will not change her personal traits.

What can make a difference, is my own attitude. When I started the nursing job, I took better care of my health, so I can be a role model for my patients. Now it comes that I need to be a role model for those incoming nurses too. I act now very consciously toward those new nurses, by offering help and reminding them that we row together this boat.

What is your experience with bullying in a work place and how did you deal with it?

[JKL33]

kocurek said:

What is your experience with bullying in a work place and how did you deal with it?

First, I don't consider all undesirable behavior toward a coworker to be a matter of bullying. I have seen some people bully others, or unsuccessfully try to. But I would say on the whole, there are many more times I have seen people just doing what people do, for reasons that have solely to do with themselves--of which they may or may not be conscious/aware. For example, if someone subconsciously feels insecure, it isn't unusual for them to try to feel better by trying to make others look bad or less-than somehow.

I have seen a number of  hopeful "rising stars" not realize that at the end of the day the corporation won't care more about them or admire them more or NEED them more than they need anyone else. But these poor people just don't realize it yet--and it can be pretty challenging to tolerate them until they figure it out.

Other times people just feel very stressed at work and some have significant stressors outside of work, too.

There are all kinds of things...

What helped me was to see these things for what they are and to not run an internal dialog as if it is a problem with me. Hunker down and focus on taking great care of patients and let the unhappy/stressed people work through their own life. That's really what we're all doing, after all.

[I realize there are some instances of serious bullying. I've experienced a fellow staff nurse attempting to bully me in a serious way only once in my career so far. The kind of things she was doing were less offensive to me personally than the fact that her actions were dangerous for patients. I dealt with that in an official manner, head-on.]

Some disagree with me, but I have had the best success with mostly ignoring (or going about my business and not reacting to) people who seem as if they could be trying to bully me, choosing instead to focus in being kind and professional and taking the best care of patients that I can. I figure for the most part the would-be bullies have their own problems and those don't need to have anything to do with me unless there is a serious threat to myself or to patients.

[Emergent, RN]

They're always social dynamics anywhere you go. In an estrogen drenched environment such as nursing, these types of things can get hard to tolerate.

I'm currently working at a data center build as an occupational nurse part-time. It is a highly charged testosterone dominated site. I'm just a fly on the wall there. It's a lot of fun to watch a whole different type of human drama unfold.

People are fascinating.