Eating young, infighting and psyco bosses

oramar · Jan 27, 2001

Originally posted by oramar:
According to this, an old article in Nursing Spectrum all these problems are caused by the same condition, Nursing Is an Oppressed Group. Oppressed groups have certain attributes like lack of self-esteem, passive-aggressivesness, internalized hostility and divisivesness. Nurses eat their young and lash out at other nurses because they are helpless to do anything else. Nurse managers percieving the helplessness of their profession take on the attributes of non nursing managment which tends to be predatory and unsupportive. I will try to post it, many of my links do not connect, probably I am doing something wrong and just do not realize it. However I will try to post the link. http://community.nursingspectrum.com/MagazineArticles/article.cfm?AID=176,second attempt then I give up, http://community.nursingspectrum.com/MagazineArticles/article.cfm?AID=176, oh what the heck one more attempt then I really will give up. http://community.nursingspectrum.com/MagazineArticles/article.cfm?AID=176

[This message has been edited by oramar (edited January 27, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by oramar (edited January 27, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by oramar (edited January 27, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by oramar (edited January 27, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by oramar (edited January 27, 2001).]

To everyone the third link is the one that connects, do not ask me why, they all look the same to me.

oramar · Jan 27, 2001

Originally posted by jp#1:
Good article! I agree with the dynamics probably directing the actions of management; however, how do nurses survive during all this? Also, have a hypothetical situation to present and would like opinions: What do you think about a supervisor of approx. 57 psych. pts. with a staff of 10 to supervise and this supervisor is a head-injury with visible sx. of continuing neuro impairment?--has difficulty processing info., unsteady gait, falls asleep during duty; superior management is aware and no action taken? Sounds like a nightmare, doesn't it? Remember, this is only hypothetical!! Would you be concerned for your license, dread coming to work, etc.?Will welcome your input!

Yes, that is the obvious weaknessin the article, that it contains no info on steps the bedside nurse can take to deal with the situation. As you say it was aimed at managment only. I found just having the info liberating. Firstly because it validates my own feelings, I have not got a string of degrees but I recognized a lot of the things the author points out on my own and I am proud of that fact. Secondly, somehow understanding what is going on makes me feel less guilty and angry. I have a tendency to turn guilt and anger inward and become depressed. As for the supervisor problem,why don't you post it as a topic? I think someone would have some good advice even though I don't. I once accepted a job on a unit when I was young and quickly realized that the manager was mentally ill. The worse thing was that the higher ups and her staff were covering up herdangerous and inappropriate behavior,a bunch of enablers with an alcolholic. Within six weeks I was down at the nursing office asking to be moved to another unit. The people in the nursing office said "Oh another one jumping ship because of Mrs. T's nutty behavior."

sunnybrook83 · Jan 27, 2001

JP1

I'd keep going up that ladder til I got some response!! If no help from management, go to board of directors, ethics committee, etc...

This women is unable to perform her job description and needs to be put in a non-critical (PT CARE) area. Sooner or later someone will respond- Or fire you !

jp#1 · Jan 28, 2001

Good article! I agree with the dynamics probably directing the actions of management; however, how do nurses survive during all this? Also, have a hypothetical situation to present and would like opinions: What do you think about a supervisor of approx. 57 psych. pts. with a staff of 10 to supervise and this supervisor is a head-injury with visible sx. of continuing neuro impairment?--has difficulty processing info., unsteady gait, falls asleep during duty; superior management is aware and no action taken? Sounds like a nightmare, doesn't it? Remember, this is only hypothetical!! Would you be concerned for your license, dread coming to work, etc.?Will welcome your input!

Mijourney · Jan 30, 2001

Oramar, once again you have presented an article that's right on target. Nursing has allowed itself to be dutifully exploited by medicine, administration, and the public. It's like battered wife syndrome. Nursing must make a clean break from the narrowly focused medical model to a broader model that is all inclusive. We cannot continue to serve as the backdrop to the AMA and AHA. I firmly believe that physicians as well as health and hospital administrators will find themselves losing their shirts without nurses to hold them together. Nursing has the numbers to progress, we just need to show we have the will. Our nursing educators must be willing to train assertive nurses for not just patient care but for nurse self-care.

oramar · Feb 2, 2001

Two things, MIJourney you must have read my mind because I was just wondering what they teach in nursing school these days as far as dealing with opression and abuse. Nothing was said when I went to school but that was 20 years ago. Also, some people emailed me and objected to this article on the bases that it takes individual responsiblity away. I will compare being aware of the potential for abuse to being aware of the fact that some drivers are under the influence of alcohol. Just because you take responsiblity for you own actions and do not drink and drive does not mean you are not going to be killed by someone under the influence. Same goes for being aware of group behaviors while taking responsibility for ones individual actions.

Doc · Feb 3, 2001

This article is quite good. The concept is not new - many similar articles have been written about "horizontal violence" in nursing. In our nursing school we were taught about it, but not taught how to combat it!

As the theory goes - we are oppressed by the medical profession and health downsizing.

Our school prefered to say that we need to individually assert ourselves as a profession and not be afraid to stand up to doctors and administrators. As if that's going to happen! Administrators have most of us around their little fingers.

We do need to demand respect from doctors and the public as professionals, but what about the bitching, the backstabbing, eating young, etc that goes on? Nurses need an alternative outlet for their frustrations about being subrank to the medical profession, being forced to work different shifts, lack of leave time, abismal nurse-patient ratios, etc etc. Nurses also need to be able to debrief after a particularly hard shift. How many nurses feel they can do any of that? Not many. Do the hospitals/ facilities enable this? No.

I think as nurses we need to keep check of our feelings, so that we are not taking anything out on someone else, so that we are not taking each other personally, and don't feel threatened by each other. I'd like to hear other people's views about this.

Take care, all of you.

oramar · Feb 3, 2001

dear Doc, I am hearing from many different people that this info has been around for a while but it is brand new to me. The article was a revalation to me. I had suspected something was going on like this just from living through it but I never saw it all set down in black and white before. My personally experience has been that good leadership can make the difference between a good unit culture and a lot of bad stuff. Unfortunately, the downsizing and retructuring of the past couple of years resulted in bad managers replacing good managers. In my opinion the infighting got worse and the cost cutting increased.

Mijourney · Feb 3, 2001

Originally posted by Doc:
This article is quite good. The concept is not new - many similar articles have been written about "horizontal violence" in nursing. In our nursing school we were taught about it, but not taught how to combat it!

As the theory goes - we are oppressed by the medical profession and health downsizing.
Our school prefered to say that we need to individually assert ourselves as a profession and not be afraid to stand up to doctors and administrators. As if that's going to happen! Administrators have most of us around their little fingers.

We do need to demand respect from doctors and the public as professionals, but what about the bitching, the backstabbing, eating young, etc that goes on? Nurses need an alternative outlet for their frustrations about being subrank to the medical profession, being forced to work different shifts, lack of leave time, abismal nurse-patient ratios, etc etc. Nurses also need to be able to debrief after a particularly hard shift. How many nurses feel they can do any of that? Not many. Do the hospitals/ facilities enable this? No.

I think as nurses we need to keep check of our feelings, so that we are not taking anything out on someone else, so that we are not taking each other personally, and don't feel threatened by each other. I'd like to hear other people's views about this.

Take care, all of you.

Hi Doc. I agree with you that nurses eating one another is a problem that needs attention. I personally feel that some of the problem is due to the nature of women bringing personal baggage to their jobs. Also, women tend to operate in cliques and not teams. When you find a group of nurses operating as a team, and have done so for years, you know you have a group of nurses who have put their priorities in perspective. They see the forest as well as the trees. Genuine nursing support groups may be helpful as a source of relief to those who need to vent immediately after the storm.

Having wrote that, nurses still need to acknowledge the role that the oppressive medical model has played in nursing and health/medical care in general. We do have an obligation to work on our individual idiosyncrasies so that we won't be part of the problem. But we need to actively engage one another, other professionals, the media, and the public in pointing out other problems inherent within the system.

Doc · Mar 24, 2001

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that we would benefit from challenging the systems that put obstacles in our way. However, any call to change is usually met by resistance. In a culture where nurses already put each other down quite a lot, this resistance is huge. It doesn't matter to most that this change might benefit us all as a profession, it is the threat of change in an already stressful environment that makes nurses react in such a way! That, and also that we have been conditioned to respond in that way.

I think we need to work on ourselves first: set an example for others on how to react to new ideas, and other stressful situations. Work on our communication so we find the most effective way to elicit change from others without getting hammered by negative reactions. How to keep check of our feelings so WE don't just snap if someone pushes our buttons. Finally, how to relax, wind down and be calm in a tense situation. For this to happen we need to keep check of our feelings, unload through debriefing, look after ourselves on and off the shift to make sure we cope on a functional, rational and calm level.

Once we have achieved this, we can start communicating in a constructive way with colleagues about issues that are getting in the way of safe and effective care, or that are counterproductive in some other way. When our colleagues come to some understanding and consensus about these issues, we can gather support from each other for some of the bigger issues on an organisational or state level.

Infighting and young-gobbling always involves some sort of power struggle. It is only when we empower ourselves and others around us that we can combat it.

I call on you all to speak up about what YOU do to achieve these things:

1) Debriefing

2) Unwinding or relaxing at home

3) Dealing with tension at work

4) Communicating a call for change

5) Empowering yourself and others around you

Take care, Doc

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