How do you work with the "SUPERNURSE"!!!

Nurses General Nursing

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Have any of you ever worked with someone who feels like they do everything and everyone else is lazy? I work with a great bunch of nurses. We just have one that thinks she is the only one that works, she's the fastest, everyoe else is lazy, she's the best IV starter, etc., etc.. She has been a nurse for sometime, I would say about 15 + years and tells me (I've only been a nurse sine 06') and another nurse (who has been a nurse just over a year) how lucky we are to be working in our department. We work in the surgery department. She tells us that they rarely hire new grads to the department and we should be grateful to be there. She normally only works the pre op area and gets mad if she does have to float down to post op (which rarely happens) she says she can't stand being in endo (it's gross: per her), the PACU nurses have cake jobs because they only have one pt at a time, I have never seen her do a procedure (chest tube, bone marrow bx, etc.) until the other day when she was made to go in to see how to assist in a chest tube placement. She is really bringing everyone down. We have tried to go to management and they did pull the pre op, post op, PACU, and endo nurses together for a meeting so we could all vent our concerns. We have not seen anything come of the meeting yet and its going on three weeks now. She like to go to our department manager alone and voice her concerns. She can turn the tears on at the drop of a dime. The sad part is that I have really liked her up until the last couple of months. She is always saying she needs a new job...I say GO! I have told myself to just avoid her and only have a working relationship with her but her rude remarks and how she treats us is getting crazy. What to do?

Specializes in Acute post op ortho.

Vent to your hearts content, that's why we're here.

Just remember.....

Karma is your friend...what goes around, comes around.

She'll get hers....

My super nurse is digging that grave, and I'm feeling like a passive aggressive who wants to get rid of animosity... but its getting worse each week with my SN, large in charge as I've affectionately nicknamed her...

She'd be sitting at the nursing station staring at her charting screen, holding her cell phone, whispering quietly, for hours... Last night was the worst, 4 hours of cell chat time. She leaves the floor for 30-45m at a time, which I know the supervisor has seen... She's verbally abusive to everyone. She yelled about the techs then yelled for them both to come down the hall at 3am to address one of them charting a vital during a period of time where we didn't know where she was for 45m. I think every patient on the hall could hear. She went to all three of the nurses individually last night and had us give her only three patients their scheduled meds. For a couple of weeks, we didn't talk besides on a necessary basis because I'd say no to her or confront something that was done... those weeks of silence and not working as "her staff" were delightful... but then I forgot... I mentioned to our educator, who works on charge education... said I know roz is having it really hard now, she's struggling, especially Mondays, I'm not sure, her communication to the rest of the staff is inappropriate and she's been intimidating all of us. (big woman, probably twice my size)... we're all scared of her. Well, from what I understand 3 other nurses reported her for various things. She was off the floor, with us looking for her, this time for almost an hour... Then the winch, I swear... she walked in just in time for credit of my first real management of a near code... She hadn't even introduced herself to a floating nurse (leaving at 11p) from another floor, which this new nurse didn't show a bit of fear, and I find out after she leaves, she had the worst assignment since 7p, so just enough time to give meds and L.I.C. gave her the new admission... floor is like rehab while we're a step down unit. She's now reporting these patients to an LPN... all with central lines, needing an admission assessment, oh and all five of them I got stuck with last night covering our LPN. Well this poor new grad, she managed, not well at all and did ask q's but not enough and got a bad report on patients poorly followed. I walk past one of her patient's room looking for LIC to see if she's in a room... Nope but do see new grads patient seizing, unresponsive, gurgling, no suction in room, glucose 5 after FSBS won't read. I managed that situation, start to finish - flawlessly - with lots of help from my tech and two of the new nurses, the floating nurse was frozen at bedside and not answering me, just fiddling with the suction when I asked her to turn it on bc I couldn't reach. She got pushed out of the way, and I took over because I was the senior there. I find out later, she didn't even know how to hook up suction, I felt horrible, she was crying... The actual near code... honestly loved every second of it, I got my ACLS cert after feeling unsafe and anxious that a code would be mishandled, and it felt natural and came right back, I can't believe how well my brain worked for my third shift ... well, LIC walks in, no lie, 30 seconds before the code team, and yells "what's going on?! turn... turn..."... We're all starting to turn him, wondering why but figuring there was a reason she knew of that was urgent?! I didn't know this guy, she's got more years as an RN than me... ok.. haha. then yells louder in a quiet room to "TURN the suction to the outer cheek... " Had labs drawn, supervisor/md on way after stroke transport, amp of d50 in him and we were about to recheck when LIC and team walked in room... Team left and said good job, rehashed to md and supervisor what I knew, since he wasn't my patient, and my supervisor said looking at the sugars, and how it all happened, if we would've had 5 minutes on that, he would've coded. She complimented all of us, and she said she was so impressed of how things were handled. LIC took credit... But then assigns me this patient to cover for LPN... and since the rest of us had 5 and she had 3, she gave herself rest of LPNs patients. I covered all of them. Near code, totally unstable the rest of the night, LPN can't do any of the care, along with LPNs patients covered by this super nurse... After almost the worst night I've ever had, I listened to her gloat about her great team... In front of everyone, as I'm running around trying to manage these poorly assigned LPN patients, all unstable and central lines and new admits... She's yelling/all happy (1st time in months) telling the story to the supervisor who personally thanked me twice for taking over for the new grad, and LPN as she knew I was the only one who charted anything.

Then, I'm sitting there trying to write an order I just got for my 3rd D50 on this patient in five hours, reporting to four different doctors who were following this pt, and documenting the seq of events of what happened, and also drawing blood for late labs on her now unresponsive patient, which LIC SN gone.... now I'm giving d50 on her as well, oh another bad IV, great! Then had her other SN friends sit up and eat with her again without even seeing that we were now working with another unstable patient. In front of the rest of the staff and her friends, looks at me and yells, "yeah, you should write a letter about how well we all did! We need to be recognized for this!!"

I wanted to scream all morning... Had to address the admitting MD of that pt, with sequence of events for the fourth time now... Oh and she gave me the pleasure of nervous nancy for report of my 3 easy patients, I didn't finish report with her until 8:15a, then had to give explain this almost code one more time to the day charge nurse and what we were doing.

I called immediately this morning explaining I need to switch off for personal reasons with our scheduler, for the first time in months, a shift opened today for Tuesdays... I swear someone was looking out for me.

(Oh and btw, my first time to the morgue last week, with my 1st patient who died I was caring for... she sent me alone... with a scary security guard.)

I've been a little more positive about the night after getting some rest... and it felt good to have each of my coworkers compliment my quick thinking and direction to them.

Thank you ACLS for confidence and learning how to communicate! "TURN... TURN..." what??!!

Another RN said Large and in Charge got off the elevator noticed the crash cart in front of the door... and for the first time in a year, she ran down to us, which my super nurse doesn't run, threw down her food and drink in an empty room.

Ahh... I feel so much better now that I've written that out!

:oornt:

Thanks again for this threat.

:oornt:

Ok, quick follow up about my super nurse, "large and in charge"...

She was admitted to the hospital with TIA symptoms! Should be out tomorrow and she's ok, but man, I feel bad.

Looks like she's been at the other end of burn out that I would never like to see.

I'm going to try to pick up a good exercise routine. Geez. As much as I dislike her sometimes, I feel bad for trashing her all the time now.

Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.

I would completely ignore her. You manager won't be able to change her personality. I would however call her bluff. The next time she says she wishes she had another job, hand her a print out of some jobs you have found on the net at other facilities. If she says she wants a new job, just tell her that "we want you to have a new job also. What can we do to help you".

I had a nurse one time that acted like that. I pulled her aside and just told her to her face what an a______she was being and that I was tried of listening to her and she finally shut up and that was the end of it. You have to stand up to people like that.

Specializes in Derm/Wound Care/OP Surgery/LTC.

I feel really lucky. I worked with supernurse for two years and she took a real liking to me for some reason (probably because I am a Jew from NY transplanted to FL like she was). Anyway, supernurse used to drag me around with her and showed me EVERYTHING she did, how she did it, why she did it...and then let me know how lucky I was to have her show me all of this. :D The other nurses HATED her. Me? I found her amusing. I used to think...don't break your arm patting your own back! :)

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