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Discussion

Human Nature Question

I keep hearing or reading about "nurses eating their young" and general meanness between nurses that I believe eventually affects patients.

If you take doctors and lawyers out of the equation, nursing is one of the higher paid professions. We used to have a couple of factories in our town that paid very well for everyone from floor sweepers on up and I used to hear the same stories about employee relations from those places too. What is it about these situations that seems to bring out the worst in people? I would think that people who have those jobs would be so grateful to have them that they'd do whatever they could to support each other. Or is this a case of "silly me" ?!

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It's a real shame that adults have to act in such a way, but it happens all the time. I suppose that some people fear that they may lose their job at any moment, due to economy-driven cutbacks, and think that they have to make everyone else look bad in order to secure their position. Other than that, I think it's a matter of personal character, and it wouldn't matter what type of job certain people hold.

  • Experts

Nursing is a female dominated profession, we have yet to learn how to band together and support each other effectively. We do not realise how powerful we are as a profession and those that do are in the minority.

Where ever you work there is always an element of somebody who will be horrible to you and others, nursing is no different.

Most nurses are decent and caring people working very hard.

  • Author

Good point, animal, about people thinking they have to secure their positions by making everyone else look bad. I used to hear those stories when the economy was better here, actually. Those factories have been gone for years so I'd hate to think what the working atmosphere would be like if they were here now.

  • Experts

why is it that no one ever hears about workers at other professions being nasty to each other? do you ever hear about nurses taking guns into work and killing each other? just two days ago a pharmacy employee walked into where he worked in long beach out here and killed people in the pharmacy--not nurses. you may not have heard about it nationally, but it was all over the local news here. postal workers go postal. office workers go nuts. i used to work in offices and you wouldn't believe how nasty office people can be. what i'm getting at is that the expression "nurses eating their young" is just a euphemism for nasty behavior which really goes on in all walks of life. there are always going to be people who like to lord their superiority over others or bully them. you need to learn to stand up to them and deal with this behavior because as rns we are in leadership positions to do something about this when we see it happening. what i found was many rns have no backbone and either take this behavior from the bullies while others stand around and let it go on which fuels the bullies so they will do it again. i didn't permit it to go on around me. will you if you see it happen?

  • Author

My experience in recent working years has been good actually - I was downsized last year from a job I'd held for almost 20 years working in an almost all female office that was like a second family. We still get together to catch up on each other's lives and reminisce. I worked for a few months in a nursing home after that and was lucky there too with a warm and supportive atmosphere. (then downsized again :cry:) I'm not too worried about work situations in the future, just a little concerned about stepping back into what is probably the "real" world.

I would think you'd get this in any profession. But I have already seen it quite a bit in clincials already. I had one rotation where the floor nurses wanted nothing to do with students, constantly complained we were getting in their way, and we were going everything all wrong.

But I have also come across nurses who have been wonderful and took us younglins under their wings and really showed us stuff we could never learn in a classroom.

It doesn't help that nursing is so stressful.

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