ainz and sjoe Any suggestions - page 2

blue writes: "And please do site [sic] the literature you are referring to because I have at least 4 female friends with Phd's in psych who have *no* idea what you are talking about."

I am sorry to hear that you have 4 female friends with PhDs who are not able to research this topic. A browse in any of the larger bookstores will reveal a foot or two of shelfspace devoted to bullying in its many forms, a number of which will be familiar to most girls and women growing up in US society.

And, as I mentioned, numerous references have been posted on this BB during previous discussions of this topic. To quote from only one such post:

(Well, I was going to, but Stevie, below, beat me to it. The title of Wurtzel's book rhymes with 'witch,' but this BB censors the name to protect fragile ears. Both of these books were written by women, you might notice.)

If you re-read any or all of my numerous posts, you will notice that I have never said that ALL girls and women who have experienced this socialization have incorporated it totally into their personalities. Neither have I said that NO men engage in destructive competition.

Absolutes tend to be less than accurate, IMHO.

But we have strayed from the original topic which was seeking suggestions for positive changes.

Thinking about this a bit more since my previous response, I think that nurses can and do make some real attempts, one workplace at a time, to cooperate and to function as a team. BUT I also think it will require substantial systemic restructuring before there is a widespread impact. What comes to mind is a single, unified, national healthcare system, well coordinated from top to bottom, where people ARE actually all on the same team.

Meanwhile, we nurses should not beat ourselves, or each other, up because this kind of cooperation doesn't already exist, because whatever nurses do by themselves at this point, cannot bring the system together, IMHO. There are too many reasons including financial competition, managerial "control," professional status-seeking, etc. that are beyond the ability of nurses to "fix."

It is less than useful to blame ourselves for all of this or to think we can somehow "make it all better." We simply do not have, and will not have, the power or authority to do it. It looks to me as though the best we can do is on a very local, immediate level--with ourselves and our immediate co-workers--the people and the situations right in front of our faces every day.

Actually this is well documented and I have heard of it. Here are just a couple of books sjoe recommended to me, since my 14 year old daughter experienced this behavior when she started junior high last year.



Wurtzel, Elizabeth, *****: In Praise of Difficult Women, Doubleday, NY, 1998.

Page 14 "According to psychologist Robert Cairns, girls, at around age ten, develop a powerful, sophisticated technique that, although not physically assertive, uses alienation and rumor-mongering to vanquish a rival," writes Michael Segell in one of Esquire's periodic attempts to remind its readers why women are not to be trusted. "This style of indirect aggression can emotionally devastate the victim, who often has no idea why, or even by whom, she's being attacked. Organizing social intrigues as a way of ganging up on a peer not only prolongs conflict but kindles larger group discord. As girls enter adulthood, they become even more skilled at using gossip, aspersions, and social ostracism to assault their adversaries."


Simmons, Rachel, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, Harcourt, NY, 2002.

Page 3 There is a hidden culture of girls' aggression in which bullying is epidemic, distinctive, and destructive. It is not marked by the direct physical and verbal behavior that is primarily the province of boys. Our culture refuses girls access to open conflict, and it forces their aggression into nonphysical, indirect, and covert forms. Girls use backbiting, exclusion, rumors, name-calling, and manipulation to inflict psychological pain on targeted victims. Unlike boys, who tend to bully acquaintances or strangers, girls frequently attack within tightly knit networks of friends, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the victims.


Lots more too . . . . . just google.

steph

While it's great there are organizations to promote the different nursing (LPN-RN), it seems to me that having a united front that includes all nurses would be of benefit for many of these problem areas. After all, they appear to affect both. Strength in numbers as they say. Or like all the branches of the military working together to achieve one common goal. Then again, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.