Do nurses eat their young?

EwaAnn · Feb 10, 2015

It's amazing how a file suddenly disappears when the lawyer needs it. But yet if a nurse changes anything in a document or if it disappeared, the nurse would be the #1 suspect. But yet the hospital conveniently gets rid of the evidence and that just seems to be okay. They terrorized the nurse to a point she couldn't think clearly. That's terrorism. New nurses come out of school being taught to do things properly. Obviously things were not being done the right way in the ER. They were afraid they would be exposed. They were hiding something.

Pumpkinn · Feb 10, 2015

I'm sorry to hear that blondenurse12!!!

CamillusRN, BSN · Feb 26, 2015

Hi there I am currently done my academic foundations in nursing and I am awaiting year two placement ( my program is a 1+3) structure. I am just trying to get a feel for what nursing will be like once I'm a new nurse, and I have heard experienced nurses are hard on the younger less experienced nurses. To the point that it makes these news nurses want to quit and disrupts morale. Have any of you experienced this? I hope I'm wrong! Older nurses should be mentors for the young nurses to increase productivity and patient care. New nurses must learn from experience and I imagine that would be difficult when the new nurses are afraid of what might happen.

My experience was almost the complete opposite. My area truly was experiencing a shortage and the hospital was getting desperate for more nurses. My preceptors were the type that expected a little bit of research to be done before a question was asked. I can't speak for all hospitals or nurses, but in my experience a ridiculously obvious desire to learn and an ability to retain information (so questions only had to be asked once) put me on the "good side" of my more experienced coworkers. Were they "hard" on me as a new grad? They told it like it was, and didn't dress up any "constructive criticism." Did I ever feel disrespected, bullied, or devalued? No.

Best of luck to you as you complete your education!

CamillusRN, BSN · Feb 26, 2015

Not only do nurses eat their young but there is growing concern that a number of newly graduated nurses leave the profession or change jobs because of a lack of effective peer mentoring support. I am very interested in this topic and I am exploring it for a doctoral degree thesis.

I wonder how much of the "lack of effective peer mentoring support" is from units being staffed by more and more new nurses who don't have experience in mentoring? Because of the "older" nurses being forced to retire for any number of BS reasons? I would love to read your findings after your defense - do you know when your thesis will be published?

No Stars In My Eyes · Feb 26, 2015

To be completely fair when saying 'nurses eat their young', sometimes the young try to cut the older nurses off at their knees. It must be demoralizing and disappointing to them to see us continuing on working on our bloody stumps. :roflmao:

CamillusRN, BSN · Feb 26, 2015

To be completely fair when saying 'nurses eat their young', sometimes the young try to cut the older nurses off at their knees. It must be demoralizing and disappointing to them to see us continuing on working on our bloody stumps.

^^ This.

How much of the eating of the young is actually new nurses backstabbing the older nurses because they can't take the heat and refuse to get out of the kitchen? Believe me, I'm not denying that there are some experienced nurses who do bully younger nurses - I haven't seen it often, but I have seen it.

More frequently, however, I see hypersensitive new nurses turning their couldabeen mentors in to the DON for bullying when no such thing was actually occurring. "Go look it up" (which I personally think is a great teaching tool) somehow gets misrepresented as "Go F yourself". The DON ends up siding with the new grad and reprimands the older nurse. Creates bad blood more so than the former, because now the experienced nurse is overly cautious with every new grad they work with - the feeding hand was bitten and that takes a heck of a long time to heal (speaking from personal experience as a mentor in my previous career).

This is my own personal opinion, but I actually think that a lot of the "eating the young" started with the mentor being backstabbed as described above by a mentee way down the line, and the hurt from that betrayal turned a great mentor into a stone-faced and bitter nurse.

Birdy2 · Feb 26, 2015

I was terrified of this very thing when I first started working. Mainly because that's what I experienced in clinicals. That's how I decided to work where I do. Not because of the type of floor or patient load, but because the nurses there are all willing to help and explain things. They understand that you've been to school and now it's time to do the real hands on nursing. They don't say go look it up. If they know the answer they tell you. One of the reasons is because most questions asked have to be answered right then in order for patients to get the care they need. My first month I had to ask tons of questions about how to give certain meds, dressing changes, all kinds of stuff. You don't learn everything in school and most of the time things are done differently than what you learned. So I say all nurses should help others. That's what we do and there's no time for attitudes. All my coworkers are like family to me and I couldn't be more thankful for that. It really makes the difference

Pumpkinn · Feb 26, 2015

Very interesting insight here!! I never thought that the "eating of the young" could be a reverse and mentees are disrespecting mentors, leaving a sour taste. Interesting perception, thank you for sharing! ðŸ˜ºðŸ˜¸

Ruby Vee, BSN · Feb 26, 2015

I wonder how much of the "lack of effective peer mentoring support" is from units being staffed by more and more new nurses who don't have experience in mentoring? Because of the "older" nurses being forced to retire for any number of BS reasons? I would love to read your findings after your defense - do you know when your thesis will be published?

Somehow, by the wording of the post, I don't think the thesis will be completely unbiased.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Feb 26, 2015

^^ This.
How much of the eating of the young is actually new nurses backstabbing the older nurses because they can't take the heat and refuse to get out of the kitchen? Believe me, I'm not denying that there are some experienced nurses who do bully younger nurses - I haven't seen it often, but I have seen it.
More frequently, however, I see hypersensitive new nurses turning their couldabeen mentors in to the DON for bullying when no such thing was actually occurring. "Go look it up" (which I personally think is a great teaching tool) somehow gets misrepresented as "Go F yourself". The DON ends up siding with the new grad and reprimands the older nurse. Creates bad blood more so than the former, because now the experienced nurse is overly cautious with every new grad they work with - the feeding hand was bitten and that takes a heck of a long time to heal (speaking from personal experience as a mentor in my previous career).

We see that quite a lot on this board even. "How should I report my preceptor for not wearing gloves when she brushed a patient's hair?" Not "should it be reported?" or "Is it OK to touch a patient without gloves despite what my clinical instructor told me?" but "It MUST be reported, and how do I do it?" Or my personal favorite: "My preceptor didn't drop what she was doing to greet me when I walked onto the unit this morning! She hates me! She's a bully and she hates me!"

After a few rounds of that, the preceptor wants nothing more to do with the orientee, but is trapped in the mentoring position until the orientee is off orientation. That betrayal turns a would be mentor into a future colleague who will avoid the present orientee like the plague. If the orientee burns enough mentors, I can see where they feel unsupported. I can also see why no one wants to support them more than once.

I've been fortunate enough to have had great orientees through the years, some of whom I am quite proud. It seems like I always end up with the hardest working, brightest orientees. Almost always. Except for once or twice. And those one or two . . . . lets just say I understand how mentors can feel betrayed, sometimes. Luckily there are enough great orientees who follow the one or two that I haven't been embittered or stone faced.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Feb 26, 2015

I was terrified of this very thing when I first started working. Mainly because that's what I experienced in clinicals. That's how I decided to work where I do. Not because of the type of floor or patient load, but because the nurses there are all willing to help and explain things. They understand that you've been to school and now it's time to do the real hands on nursing. They don't say go look it up. If they know the answer they tell you. One of the reasons is because most questions asked have to be answered right then in order for patients to get the care they need. My first month I had to ask tons of questions about how to give certain meds, dressing changes, all kinds of stuff. You don't learn everything in school and most of the time things are done differently than what you learned. So I say all nurses should help others. That's what we do and there's no time for attitudes. All my coworkers are like family to me and I couldn't be more thankful for that. It really makes the difference

I'm glad you're happy in your work, but I don't think your preceptors did you any favors by feeding you answers instead of telling you to look it up. If there's time for them to explain it to you, there's time for you to look it up, and that makes for a better learning experience from the standpoint of actually retaining what you've learned and from knowing where to find information when you're on your own and YOU are the most experienced nurse around to ask.

EwaAnn · Feb 27, 2015

I was terrified of this very thing when I first started working. Mainly because that's what I experienced in clinicals. That's how I decided to work where I do. Not because of the type of floor or patient load, but because the nurses there are all willing to help and explain things. They understand that you've been to school and now it's time to do the real hands on nursing. They don't say go look it up. If they know the answer they tell you. One of the reasons is because most questions asked have to be answered right then in order for patients to get the care they need. My first month I had to ask tons of questions about how to give certain meds, dressing changes, all kinds of stuff. You don't learn everything in school and most of the time things are done differently than what you learned. So I say all nurses should help others. That's what we do and there's no time for attitudes. All my coworkers are like family to me and I couldn't be more thankful for that. It really makes the difference

I am happy that is the experience you got.It makes a world of difference on how you do your job. It makes you want to do the job. I wish there were more places like this.