why am I being overlooked?

[jellybean75]

A little about me, I've been a nurse for about 4 years and work on a busy med surg unit. I can say that I am a pretty competent nurse and can critically think and connect the dots, know when to intervene when a patient is going south, Help out other nurses on the floor when they have questions, or when another nurse's patient is crashing, I help out, call rapid response, etc (not bragging at all). I've noticed that nurses with less experience than me are being picked to charge. I've never been approached to charge and am wondering why? I've never rubbed any of the charge nurses or managers the wrong way and they often tell me how I am an efficient and smart nurse. I'm not jealous that I'm not being picked to charge but wondering if they see me in another way (then what they tell me) kind of makes me feel insecure. Not sure if I should approach someone about this. Thoughts?

[Lev, MSN, RN, NP]

Being charge is unfortunately not always a measure of a person's skill.

I would say assertiveness is one trait which is necessary to be charge RN.

Managers also sometimes appoint nurses who kiss up to them to be charge.

[AJJKRN]

My first two years on a Med-Surg floor I could have been charge but knew that I wanted to move to the float pool ASAP and was not wanting to be blocked from transferring for any reason.

I also noted that many of our charges on nights began being charge just after having six months of experience. I feel that this made it easier to unknowingly be a "yes man" for management and have less experience to stick up for things like staffing, working the staffing matrix, or managing conflicts which often was to the benefit of our manager at the time.

If you discuss it with anybody, I would only discuss this with your manager. What if they just didn't realize that you would have liked an opportunity to be charge? If it's something that you would need to be coached on or your manager gives you a reason why they don't want you to be charge, then it's between you and your manager and not just a speculation between you and your peers.