One of my biggest pet peeves is the goody two shoes hero act. It's so unprofessional, it really degrades the sense of a team, and vilifying others to make yourself look good is just plain immature.
The other day, I was called in by the PCT about a woman complaining of chest pain. She was AOx1, and needed to be redirected because she had a tendency to go off on tangents and needed things repeated. I started taking vitals, explaining what I was doing, and asking her about her chest pain. Another nurse came in, which distracted her. I really needed to know NOW about her pain, so I kept asking her, elaborating if she seemed confused. I also had to keep readjusting the blood pressure cuff, as she was skinny and kept trying to remove the uncomfortable thing. All this confusion made her annoyed, and she told the other nurse that I needed to stop crushing her arm (referrring to the BP cuff). The other nurse asked her, "Aww, that's okay, I'll protect you from her. You want me to fight her?" He was just joking, but that goody two-shoes act really made me lose the feel of teamwork that night. The PCT and the RT both told me that they thought his behavior was unacceptable. Thankfully, he is prn and only comes about once a month.
Another example of this was a few years back when I was an aide in a nursing home. I was preparing to give one women a shower, and as I was taking off her clothes, she started screaming like she sometimes did. A goody two shoes hero aide stepped in, soothing the resident by telling her, "It's ok, I won't let her hurt you. I'm here, it's going to be all right. I won't do what she did." The resident did calm down, but that aide tended to jump in like that and vilify others to make herself look good.
I understand that in some severe cases (aka dangerously delusional psychiatric patients) this may be necessary, but if used habitually, I think that this is so harmful to teamwork and turns patients against you. Yes, it may solve the immediate problem, but it turns staff and patients against each other, and is especially bad if the vilified one must attend to that patient after the incident.
