Do Nurses Eat Their Young?

[Brian]

We have all heard the saying "Nurses eat their young". Do you feel this is true?

Please feel free to read and post any comments that you have right here in this discussion

Thanks.

This article sums it up for me... ?

http://www.dcardillo.com/articles/eatyoung.html

Quote

This vile expression implies that experienced nurses do not treat new nurses kindly. My first problem with the statement is that it’s a generalization implying that all nurses are like that. Interestingly, whenever I hear someone utter the expression, I always say, “I don’t do that. Do you?” The person making the statement always says, “Oh no, I don’t, but many others do.” I’ve never heard even one nurse own up to doing this, although some nurses are willing to indict the entire profession. Every time that statement is repeated, it causes harm and casts a dark shadow on every nurse. Say anything enough, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Please note that by moderator consensus some of the "Nurses Eat Their Young" posts will be referred to this thread where there can be an ongoing discussion, rather than several threads saying the same thing.

To students and new grads that are having problems with nurses, please take a moment to read the above link. Is it really the entire profession, every single nurse, or do you need help with one or a few nurses? We will be glad to help you in dealing with those people, but let bury the phrase "Nurses Eat Their Young".

To experienced nurses who claim our profession eats it's young, please take a moment to read it as well and think about it. Also take time to teach, be friendly and nurturing to the new nurse and students on your unit.

[WIN007]

Well, at least you didn't write a very long "helpful" 20 bullet point critique of everything from our not coaxing the little baby nurselings patiently enough to the cross the hallway that first time to the brand of our SupportHose so there's that. Normally if we plan to read a post that starts out "I worked in the business (corporate, customer service,sales,KFC) world for 25 years" it's best not to proceed without whatever bracing tonic one would normally use in provoking situations like that.

How were you able to rise above "those" horrible flaws that "they" have? Please share!

Wowza.

Well, thank you at least for reminding me why I left floor nursing. Do you even realize how hateful you sound?

This woman was presenting her POV and is obviously bitter for her experience. Do you think what you offered is helpful? Rather you just validated her entire experience.

I was a second career RN and I too came from a private sector business environment. There's alot of value in that and these second career nurses who can bring a POV that's relevant to much of what is transforming healthcare now. They bring computer skills, business and communication skills, and above all (the reason the hospitals like to hire them) is that they come from environments very focused on customer care. I know if I talked to my coworkers or through some of the fits or horizontal aggression I saw regularly in a hospital setting I would not have last through the afternoon in any other professional job. It's just not acceptable.

When I was a new nurse because presumably I was over 30 and didn't have a mom who worked athe hospital nor whole boatload of friends and family at the hospital (ie, no one backing me) .

I managed to land in a ratsnest of miserable nurses who very much made my life hell. I never even got an orientation and they would then go to the clinical manager and say I didn't know how to do anything. Well , no jack. See, THAT's why I took this STUDENT NURSING JOB. needless to add when I graduated I quickly jumped to another unit. Not as bad but not a whole lot better. No, I didn't need to be "walked across the hall" M'am. But I did expect a decent orientation. The nurse who was supposed to be orienting me never showed me how to review charts, hang blood or other such minor details. Thus I had to either do these things without much more than a clinical guideline, or ask someone else who typically snickered. Lovely for me and real safe for the patients.

That was my experience and you've been provided with an entire host of stories and experiences from others who experienced similar.

There's a REASON if you google 'horizontal aggression' the first 40 or 50 returns are about nursing, you know.

Reflect on your own post. Acceptance is the first component of recovery.

The turnover is costing the nation a fortune. For-profit, get it, USA is for-profit healthcare - doesn't accept that well and in these days they're really struggling. Perhaps you'd rather have RN's be replaced with immigrants and QMA's than work as professionals and offer professional courtesy to each other - including experienced professionals who happen to be entering nursing. So what you say, you've got 15 or 20 years experience in the ED? yeah, well so the more nursing jobs eliminated or nursign duties chunked off to others the more competition you still have for those jobs. The tighter the networks profit lines the harder they come after you. So it DOES affect you.

The business woman you were so rude to probably could have explained this to you.

Nursing aggression is rampant and a huge expensive problem. If you don't deal with it like

professionals it is WILL be dealt with in other ways and you may not like them very much.

if that doesn't convince you then keep in mind the next new second career RN you're obnoxius to may just end up writing software for management that tracks stuff, like which nurses are behind the sucky quality indicators for the quarter. As they say, the mills of justice turn slowly but they yield a fine grain. ;-)

[WIN007]

It goes both ways. In quite a few threads around here, I have also witnessed younger nurses make nasty, disparaging remarks about senior nurses. I think we all need to be reminded from time to time to have a little more tolerance and compassion for each other.

I have too. But when I have seen that happen they're typically doing it to an older nurse that has been the recipient of hostility from other longer term nurses and they feel it's "safe". The whole thing has just GOT to stop. I blame most of all the clinical directors and managers and charge nurses who feel because they got picked on 25 years ago everyone should. No, they shouldn't. It creates an unpleasant environment for most, encourages bullies, costs a fortune in turnover for the network, stifles productivity, it's certainly one of the top reasons nursing is still not given the respect it deserves and people continue to make stereotypical slurs about women. Above all it breaks down communication and creates an unsafe environment for the patients.

Put another way, do we see the crew of an airline act like this? No, of course not. In the cockpit there's just no room for it. Well, there's not in a hospital full of sick people either.

PS - don't even get me started on some of the scrubs I see nurses show up in. :-)

[WIN007]

1) So....its OK if we do it because everyone else does it? That sounds like an excuse to me, and not an effort to rectify the problem. There is no viable reason to be harsh on students and new nurses. There is equally no viable reason to coddle said students and nurses. This is not black and white, there is a grey area. Also, this is not a black and white issue in relation to age, either. There are seasoned nurses who are great at leading young nurses in the right direction with just the right amount of personal responsibility...and there are young ones (who have been nurses for 2-5 years) who will look to ostracize a young nurse as soon as possible. I see it every day in my ICU...thankfully, not with the people I directly work with.

2) Glass house, stones, etc..

3) If a cliche is truthful, its not tired, old, and misused.

Actually it does NOT happen in other professional environments. Not even in the hospitals. Do you see the board treat each other that way? Pharma? Nope. The Human Resources Department? Nope. Heck, even the high school workers working in the cafeteria don't do that to each other.

How about physicians. Now that's an entirely different culture. They'll cover for each other and carry things to their grave. Nurses, "SHE DID IT!!!".

There's no point in denying it as there's far far too much peer-reviewed evidence supporting it, much less the fact this is the busiest thread on the world's largest online nursing website. A much better solution would be a broadscale professional effort to disingage it. Meanwhile if you have a bully on your unit, and you know who they are, disengage them rather than participate. Bullies have power only because they set a level of intimidation by making other nurses think if they don't cooperate with the bullying their next. Make the bully next. A__sholes cost companies a fortune.

[WIN007]

I really didn't have a problem with older nurses picking on me, but I do have teeth marks from younger nurses trying to take a bite at me. It goes both ways, boys and girls.

Has nothing to do with age. I was 36 years old when I got my RN and I got plenty of the harassment.

In more recent years I HAVE seen newer nurses hire on with theiir friends and proceed to harass longer term nurses, yes, but only the ones that the other nurses on the unit were already stalking.

In all, newer nurses groupstalking existing unit nurses does happen but it happens about 1/100th of as many times as more experienced nurses stalk and bully lone new nurses on the unit.

A sense of proportion helps keep the problem in context and the solutions relevant.

[WIN007]

Well I think maybe some nurses eat their young. One in particular where I work started out very nasty. But then she came around after a couple weeks after I made a point of calling her on it. But, the majority are awesome and very helpful. I think its a personality thing in general. Some people are miserable. Period. This is not unique to nursing.

It actually IS very much unique to nursing. I've worked in three fields and I can tell you beyond doubt it is. But as I'm scientific enough as to not offer anecdotal evidence as definitive proof go Google "horizontal aggression' and see what you get.

To my thinking a lot of it is the culture set by the Clinical Manager and Director. These older clinical managers who don't want anything different than it was in 1960 and allow it to continue are the problem.

To give an opposite example, a couple years into my job I had a new student nurse who was uber-sensitive shadowing me one night and of course I had her do the assessment and various other things. I explained some breath sounds to her and the patient seemed puzzled and I said she was a student and learning.

I got called in to the CM some weeks later to discuss 'my problems with the unit staff'. This person had gone and told bher I said she was "only a student" (even if I had, so what? she was). That was the first of 3 similar experiences I ahd with the manager where I was drug into some manufactured crisis like this. The problem was the CM was never on the floor,, had no idea what was going on and completely took revisionist heresay as fact and dramatized them.

SHE was the biggest problem.

[Five&Two Will Do]

To students and new grads that are having problems with nurses, please take a moment to read the above lilnk. Is it really the entire profession, every single nurse, or do you need help with one or a few nurses? We will be glad to help you in dealing with those people, but let bury the phrase "Nurses Eat Their Young".

To experienced nurses who claim our profession eats it's young, please take a moment to read it as well and think about it. Also take time to teach, be friendly and nuturing to the new nurse and students on your unit.

End of sermon. LOL

I do not care for this statement either,and no I have not ever heard anyone acknowledge hazing or intentionally being tough on new nurses. Being as gentle but honest as possible, I am going to venture into dangerous waters and say that perhaps it has a lot to do with the nature of the female to female interaction. I saw in nursing school for the first time how hard nurses were on the new ones, but not us few guys. Young or old, the female nursing students caught **** from the nurses on the units that we visited. This continued into the workplace after becoming an RN. I just have one thing to say to any nurse that finds it cute to haze or otherwise make it difficult on the new nurse, *&%*# off! We don't need this division in our profession. If we want to grow our practice, we need to do it together, not as old crows and young know-it-alls. That is all!

[NocturneNrse]

I've got to say.. having worked med/surg for two years straight out of school.. there is some serious bullying and horizontal aggression there.. BIG TIME. I now work as a supervisor at a nursing home, and I also take the floor so I work as the other nurses do, and I find nursing home nurses WAY more accepting, welcoming, and supportive. Perhaps it's the environment. But, I gotta tell ya... it's not all fun n games in a nursing home either. We have patients that require acute care and expert nursing judgment as well. Acuity is definitely less, but now I am responsible for 31 patients.. and 90 when I supervise. So patient load/stress is about the same. I wouldn't go back to hospital nursing for ANYTHING.!! It wasn't the stress of the job, the tasks, the patient acuity that stressed me out - I provided excellent care... it was the horizontal hostility that made me sick to my stomach daily. Nope.. never going back there again!

[WIN007]

To students and new grads that are having problems with nurses, please take a moment to read the above lilnk. Is it really the entire profession, every single nurse, or do you need help with one or a few nurses? We will be glad to help you in dealing with those people, but let bury the phrase "Nurses Eat Their Young".

To experienced nurses who claim our profession eats it's young, please take a moment to read it as well and think about it. Also take time to teach, be friendly and nuturing to the new nurse and students on your unit.

End of sermon. LOL

I do not care for this statement either,and no I have not ever heard anyone acknowledge hazing or intentionally being tough on new nurses. Being as gentle but honest as possible, I am going to venture into dangerous waters and say that perhaps it has a lot to do with the nature of the female to female interaction. I saw in nursing school for the first time how hard nurses were on the new ones, but not us few guys. Young or old, the female nursing students caught **** from the nurses on the units that we visited. This continued into the workplace after becoming an RN. I just have one thing to say to any nurse that finds it cute to haze or otherwise make it difficult on the new nurse, *&%*# off! We don't need this division in our profession. If we want to grow our practice, we need to do it together, not as old crows and young know-it-alls. That is all!

noted the exact same thing in nursing school. Course there were only two guys in a class of 40. I remember there was an LPN transitioning who used to bray about how she hated working with women and never would again, et al. I found it really offensive, but then my first career was in a white collar environment in an inherently all-male profession and the women didn't act at all like this. Nobody did. It wasn't acceptable.

By the time I was on the unit two years I was finding myself saying the same thing this woman was about workign with women. But truly, I don't. Many of my best professional experiences have been with other women. So I will revise it and say I hate working with people who behave in an uneducated and unprofessional way.

Thankfully there's plenty of nurses who DON'T act that way and the profession just needs to do what every other profession has done: make it clear it's not going to be accepted. It truly is embarassing that they even have to.

[nursel56]

PS - I didn't SAY you were hateful. I said your message to the previous participant (that you apparently managed to bully off the thread) was hateful. But you knew that.

1. My post to ricksy was about other people, not her.

2. I never said anything about second degree nurses in general, just that some write condescending threads assuming that we don't have computer skills, customer service skills, etc

3. I never said nurses don't eat their young. I'm sure some do.

4. I really am not understanding your extreme hostility towards me - your posts are full of attacks cleverly couched as adjectives like "moronic" and you will certainly find others here that are worse, considering I wasn't attacking that person, again, describing what others are doing.

I think your posts are far more personal than mine are. With that I will bow out and report further attacks even if they merely skirt the rules.

[oldiebutgoodie, RN]

Wowza.

Well, thank you at least for reminding me why I left floor nursing. Do you even realize how hateful you sound?

This woman was presenting her POV and is obviously bitter for her experience. Do you think what you offered is helpful? Rather you just validated her entire experience.

I was a second career RN and I too came from a private sector business environment. There's alot of value in that and these second career nurses who can bring a POV that's relevant to much of what is transforming healthcare now. They bring computer skills, business and communication skills, and above all (the reason the hospitals like to hire them) is that they come from environments very focused on customer care. I know if I talked to my coworkers or through some of the fits or horizontal aggression I saw regularly in a hospital setting I would not have last through the afternoon in any other professional job. It's just not acceptable.

When I was a new nurse because presumably I was over 30 and didn't have a mom who worked athe hospital nor whole boatload of friends and family at the hospital (ie, no one backing me) .

I managed to land in a ratsnest of miserable nurses who very much made my life hell. I never even got an orientation and they would then go to the clinical manager and say I didn't know how to do anything. Well , no jack. See, THAT's why I took this STUDENT NURSING JOB. needless to add when I graduated I quickly jumped to another unit. Not as bad but not a whole lot better. No, I didn't need to be "walked across the hall" M'am. But I did expect a decent orientation. The nurse who was supposed to be orienting me never showed me how to review charts, hang blood or other such minor details. Thus I had to either do these things without much more than a clinical guideline, or ask someone else who typically snickered. Lovely for me and real safe for the patients.

That was my experience and you've been provided with an entire host of stories and experiences from others who experienced similar.

There's a REASON if you google 'horizontal aggression' the first 40 or 50 returns are about nursing, you know.

Reflect on your own post. Acceptance is the first component of recovery.

The turnover is costing the nation a fortune. For-profit, get it, USA is for-profit healthcare - doesn't accept that well and in these days they're really struggling. Perhaps you'd rather have RN's be replaced with immigrants and QMA's than work as professionals and offer professional courtesy to each other - including experienced professionals who happen to be entering nursing. So what you say, you've got 15 or 20 years experience in the ED? yeah, well so the more nursing jobs eliminated or nursign duties chunked off to others the more competition you still have for those jobs. The tighter the networks profit lines the harder they come after you. So it DOES affect you.

The business woman you were so rude to probably could have explained this to you.

Nursing aggression is rampant and a huge expensive problem. If you don't deal with it like

professionals it is WILL be dealt with in other ways and you may not like them very much.

if that doesn't convince you then keep in mind the next new second career RN you're obnoxius to may just end up writing software for management that tracks stuff, like which nurses are behind the sucky quality indicators for the quarter. As they say, the mills of justice turn slowly but they yield a fine grain. ;-)

Hear, hear! I am also a second career nurse, was treated like DIRT in my first two jobs. On the second unit I was on, there were people who never even spoke to me during an entire year. Funny, now I am an APN, wear the white coat, and they sure do speak to me NOW. As you said, the mills of justice turn slowly... but yield a fine grain. I write orders for them, now.

Oldiebutgoodie

[MJJFan1, BSN, RN]

When I first started, the seasoned nurses attempted to peck at me but they learned very quick as I told them. Im no child, I was a Marine for 8 years before nursing and led marines during war, don't treat me like I'm your child, I have a mother. Once they see you wont allow it, they move on.

[WIN007]

Hear, hear! I am also a second career nurse, was treated like DIRT in my first two jobs. On the second unit I was on, there were people who never even spoke to me during an entire year. Funny, now I am an APN, wear the white coat, and they sure do speak to me NOW. As you said, the mills of justice turn slowly... but yield a fine grain. I write orders for them, now.

Oldiebutgoodie

:-) Kudos. Yep, I had a very similar experience. Unfortunately for them, the people who have what I call the CNA mentality and think they're so superior because they've emptied foleys longer than someone else, miss that the second careers have a host of other skills and degrees which when combined with clinical knowlege are very marketable to a healthcare environment. Especially now.

Meanwhile the ones that were so nasty to me are still on the floor getting old with their bad backs, lousy pay and crazy patient ratios hating their jobs and their lives. Heartbreaker.