Is there ANY reason for Experienced nurses to be Rude to New Nurses??

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I am a new nurse, graduated in September, passed board November 30th and started Orienting December 31st. I just finished my 7th week and until now have been very lucky as far as having most of the nurses I work with be very supportive and nice. I work on a very busy 32 bed Med-Surg/Ortho floor and have worked on this same floor for 3 years before becoming a nurse. I should also mention that I am an LVN, not an RN. Anyways, there is a nurse on Night shift, who has been working as a nurse about a year now. She is much younger than I am. I am 40. Friday was my second day with 5 patients on my own, with my preceptor watching over me. I had my hardest/busiest day yet this past Friday. I had 5 patients. One was a partial gastrectomy patient, one was a lap chole, one was a paraplegic with a flap closure for a decubitus, one was a total knee and the other a lumbar lami. So I had a good group. My patient with the gastrectomy was very busy. She was getting meds every few hours, she was on TPN and Lipids. Neither of which I have had to deal with yet. The patient with the knee replacement was going home, so was the Lami patient. I had critical lab values called to me, Another first. This day was FULL of first time things for me. I also received a PACU patient who had a bulging to the right side of his incision which the PACU nurse had said gotten bigger since he was in PACU. The Dr ordered a STAT MRI so I also had to do my first consent for MRI and all the paperwork. Then my gastrectomy patient got orders for remicade because of her crohns. So Even though I can't hang that I had to do all the pre-paperwork. Weigh her, do the questionnaire etc. My preceptor hung and monitored it because the rate needed to be increased every 15 mins. I also had 2 patients who needed accu checks. One patient required coverage twice. This patient also had a foley which was putting out bloody urine and the report I got from the night nurse was that the output wasn't good enough. Well I made him my priority at the beginning of the day and it just lasted till shift change. Long story short with him was that we scanned him because he was complaining and there was 253 mls of urine in his bladder. Got orders to flush, couldn't flush so we got orders to pull the foley out, wait an hour to see if he could void, he did, but it was just barely under 100. Scanned him again, 507. Got a coude catheter and put it in and a clot came through the tube, bloody urine and cloudy urine. BTW, the old cath had a clot in the tip when I removed it.

Well I guess my first mistake was that when I wrote the orders in the chart to flush, I wrote it a page back. My preceptor noticed and started writing it on the right page, but crossed it out when she saw my order. Ok the next morning when I came in, the night nurse YELLED at me that she had to call the Dr for an order to flush the catheter because there wasn't one written. I found my order and she still kept on going. I was apologizing profusely. But she would NOT let up. She just kept going on and on and on, and all the other nurses there said Oh she DID write the order! Then on her way out she says very rudely and loudly in passing by "OH and the Protonix (iv push) wasn't given and neither were the dulcolax suppositories" and she just walked away. My preceptor then jumped in. #1, I KNEW about the protonix and asked my preceptor to give it, and she said we could leave it for nights because she was doing the remicade which would be much more time consuming for this nurse to deal with at shift change since it needed to be increased every 15 mins. The protonix was due at 7PM. she still wouldn't let up and then stormed out and said "I DON'T CARE DON'T MAKE EXCUSES" OMG, I was mortified and humiliated! Yes, I am new, Yes I wrote the order in the wrong spot, but it was an empty spot. I guess I didn't think to move it up. I was having a bad day! As for the dulcolax, it was not in the emar before i left and wasn't put into the emar until 5AM the next morning. I have no clue why, the other meds that were there on the same order were put in and given at 6:30PM by me. So if all I did was write an order in the wrong place, well considering my day I am pretty ok with that.

My whole point of this is WHY do experienced nurses feel it's just ok to be RUDE. I mean, I can accept constructive criticism, but she was being rude, she was walking around just saying it in the middle of the station at shift change with ALL day and night shift nurses present. I can understand if she says to me hey, you wrote an order in the wrong spot, or she could have even called me at home, but she was just flat our RUDE. She is a NEW nurse her self. (1 year old) But I felt she handled it poorly.

Believe me I am humbled, I don't presume to know everything, I know where I came from. I am just really hurt. This nurse and I worked side by side for YEARS as CNA's before she became a nurse and it seems as though it went straight to her head. No one is perfect.

I know I can handle my job. I know I love my job and I know I still have a lot to learn, but I feel there is NO reason for people to be rude to new nurses, to reduce us to tears. Being rude won't help me learn, it has only made me not like this person very much!

Oh and by the way, this day that was very hectic for me, I was assigned a student nurse which only put more pressure on me. I don't feel ready to have a student with me, I am still new myself, but I can't help who the instructor assigns. I am not saying that in a bad way, but I want students to have someone who is REALLY good at what they do.

Oh well, sorry oto whine, but I am very hurt by this incident

I agree that it's not a conspiracy to give a suppository at the end of the night shift. A suppository should be given when it's most conveinent for the pt - like when they're awake in the morning - who cares when the shifts end/begin.

Anyway, I think that nurse was rude because she's had years of bad days working on a med/surg floor. If she's going to act like that, she should have left a long time ago. Why do mean, miserable nurses stay and polute the environment with nastiness? It's natual for nurses to get burned out - but the nurse should realize when they're turning into a monster, it's time to leave. She's just a sad woman. Block her out of your mind.

And, welcome to the world of med/surg nursing, where there's never enough time to do everything, and others love nail you for mistakes - instead of supporting you and helping you. I lasted 7 months in that environment and got out. Much happier now.

Please don't generalize the traits of this one experienced nurse on us all.

It is never o.k. for anyone to be rude to anyone at any time. Unfortunately there are rude people in our society.

It is not a tradition to eat our young.

This is so true.

This particular person would have the same personality if she was the President of IBM.

It sounds like you had some very nice nurses on your side.

I agree it is too soon to be proctoring a student - and I'm am also amazed at all the great experiences you are getting as an LVN. This will definitely be an asset for your RN bridge.

I would also take the advice to have a private chat with her about being so rude AND doing it in public. That is unprofessional.

You are a great nurse.

steph

Specializes in ER/Geriatrics.

There are alot of rude people....at all levels of nursing....If someone speaks rudely to me I immediately challenge them...with increased confidence and experience it will get easier. I have told people "you don't have to speak to me like that" if they say something rudely....or if someone speaks to me an inapproriate way in front of others I have said "would you like to come over here where it is quiet and discuss it with me". In a lot of ways we get what we put up with.

Just my two cents

Liz

Kellie, It sounds to me as if your friend of 30 years experience works in a place with a very negative workplace culture, where the shiftwars are a fact of life.

Where I work in acute care, lab wakes the pts at around 5:30, and if I were to give a needed suppository it would be between 5:30 and 6:30. I would communicate this to the oncoming shift who would most likely view it as a positive thing. I would not give a suppository before bedtime out of consideration of the pt, not to get out of dealing with the possible results.

When I worked LTC it was the specific responsiblity of the night nurses to do the BM checks and give suppositories at around 6:00. No one considered this trying to dump work on the next shift, but as a policy that made sense.

Specializes in Cardiac.

IMO, there is never a reason for nurses to be so rude to other nurses. I agree that they are few and far between, but it only takes one nurse to ruin your job at a facility.

It's ridiculous to think that grown people are still being allowed to be bullies at work.

I am being bullied at work. If this person acted this way at my husband's work, then they would already have been spoken to, and dealt with. If it continues, then they would be fired.

Not true in nursing. When was the last time an RN was fired for being a bully? Especially in this time of the 'nursing shortage'?

That's where the culture comes from. People will say over and over again, that this isn't the norm for nursing, that these people would be rude no matter what.

The difference between nursing and other fields is that in nursing, this behavior is tolerated.

And that makes all the difference in the world.

Specializes in Med-Surg.
The best time to give a suppository is early in the morning so the pt can poop during the day. People don't poop at night usually. When I worked LTC, the traditional time was to give suppositories at 6:30 AM. Similar to Lasix, you don't want pts peeing and pooping at night, it disturbs their sleep.

Another point, This may be exactly why it was put in by pharmacy at 5AM! So infact it wasn't mine to be missed anyways. I was thinking this too. Better in the AM so they can poop and be done with it. I know for a fact it was NOT in emar before I left. I was finishing closing my charts at 7:15 and re-checked ALL my patients emars to make sure.

Another point, This may be exactly why it was put in by pharmacy at 5AM! So infact it wasn't mine to be missed anyways. I was thinking this too. Better in the AM so they can poop and be done with it. I know for a fact it was NOT in emar before I left. I was finishing closing my charts at 7:15 and re-checked ALL my patients emars to make sure.
WHAT A GREAT OPPORTUNITY YOU HAVE TO BE GRACIOUS!!! I love it when this happens.

You can be the Big Girl of the two of you, explain that you did in fact check the emar, that you knew it wasn't there before you left, etc., etc., and to thank her (with a straight face) for drawing your attention to the situation anyway, because as a new nurse, blah, blah, blah....

This is a good position to be in when you are crosswise with someone, but it is oh, so sweet when you are the one who was in the right. :smokin:

Specializes in Med-Surg.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS RESPONDED!!! You have ALL made me feel better. I felt a sense of devastation that morning and it threw my WHOLE day off. To top it off a nurse I ended up giving report to that night was RUDE and at first I thought it was ME but he was in-fact being rude to everyone he got report from. I don't understand why burnt out people come to work night after night or day after day. But then again I haven't been a nurse long enough to speak to that I guess.

Thanks so much! Now I feel like my next shift I will be much more confident in knowing, I got through ONE HECK of a HARD day and if all I did was miss a suppository (Which from general concensus seems to be that AM is a BETTER time to give it) then I am ok with that. It's the FIRST time I would have ever missed a med.

But anyways, THANK YOU ALL!!! You rock! :icon_hug: :icon_hug:

You're very welcome, pink to blue. And, you opened up an interesting debate about the best time to give a suppository, I might start a thread about it.

Kellie, It sounds to me as if your friend of 30 years experience works in a place with a very negative workplace culture, where the shiftwars are a fact of life.

Where I work in acute care, lab wakes the pts at around 5:30, and if I were to give a needed suppository it would be between 5:30 and 6:30. I would communicate this to the oncoming shift who would most likely view it as a positive thing. I would not give a suppository before bedtime out of consideration of the pt, not to get out of dealing with the possible results.

When I worked LTC it was the specific responsiblity of the night nurses to do the BM checks and give suppositories at around 6:00. No one considered this trying to dump work on the next shift, but as a policy that made sense.

Oh no Garden...lol...I wasn't trying to step on your toes...please please don't think that.....and yes..you are right on the money about the negative workplace...she works in a home that has dd adults....you know those house settings with only a few residents with 24 hour care...and yes there are people she works with,...who like others have mentioned...are just burnt out miserable people who don't even care one bit about the people they are caring for...they just want a paycheck...and they come in with the gloom & doom miserable attitude & facial expressions to go right along with it and hate seeing anyone happy.....like her,& it sends them over the edge. She really loves & cares about the people she takes care of...that's why she's been there for so long......... When I was talking about people who give supps at change of shift...I was talking about the ones who purposely give it at that time so they don't have to clean up the mess & leave it to the next shift; it is out there trust me.........I think it's great that your workplace works well....... even in the hospitals I have been at when I was doing my clinicals...the nurses picked the times for meds......and suppositories as well, and they were not given until later in the morning......... and I had a discussion over this very thing with a former instructor who also thought that was a rotten thing to do to the oncoming shift.......it would be interesting to do a poll on this or start a thread as you suggested.....good idea! :)

I agree with that. Rude people are often rude at work. Nothing we can do about them but, to ignore them and get our jobs done.

I think part of the problem with rudeness in nursing is that nurses are so dependent upon each other in providing proper care to their patients. In other environments, if someone gives you incorrect or incomplete information or turns something in late, it's a hassle and may cause many problems, but it's usually something fixable and fairly forgettable. But in patient care, the problems caused may threaten the patients' well-being, even if just indirectly by taking more of the nurses' time. And the nurses are often held responsible in the present for any of the problems "caused" by another, and this is a daily threat to one's ability to perform their job & complete all of the work before them.

New nurses are especially dependent upon their colleagues to provide safe patient care. They simply do not have enough of their own experience to pull upon to be able to judge how seriously to take the various feedback that they get from colleagues. It's only natural to take all criticism to heart because they don't want to be dismissive of any feedback that they get. It could be important and the difference between life and death for their patients. They just can't tell yet when it's okay to let certain feedback bounce off them.

Shiftwork is another factor and the fact that nurses are handing off to different people each time. They can't build up specific strategies to deal with colleague's predictable weaknesses or rough spots because they don't know who they will be following each day. Because they may not have to work directly with the most difficult people every day, the difficult people may end up having more leeway than they might in another environment, when consistent interaction might lead to more people refusing to work with the difficult person, ending in either the loss of good employers or the the difficult person being managed differently.

+ Add a Comment