In a Workplace Where We Stare Death in the Face Every Day...

[NursingAgainstdaOdds]

We see some crazy things at work every day - people dying, struggling with disease, coping with disability - all sorts of emotionally challenging experiences. As I was headed home for work the other day, I realized that all that I cope with just fine, but the hardest part of my job is dealing with my co-workers. That just strikes me as totally bizarre. As the thread title says - in a workplace where we stare death in the face every day, why are some of my co-workers my biggest challenge???

In the beginning, I handled it OK. I made a conscious decision not to be overly concerned with what people think of me, to develop that thick skin a GN needs to survive, not to take personally the personality flaws of overly negative co-workers.

I have to admit, however, this issue has really gotten the best of me recently. While I have managed to avoid participating in the negativity of those few bad apples, it seems I have become a target for them. I'm getting written-up and reported for every. single. mistake. I. make. We work on a busy med-surg/tele unit (and we all know what hell that can be! ) - I regularly come in to find orders which were missed, paperwork is a disaster, IV set-ups awry. My thought process is usually "DAMN it must have been busy today!", not "So-and-so is a crappy nurse". I don't write people up - 1. I don't have time and 2. That's lame and ineffective. It's busy, people miss stuff!

You don't know how tempted I am to just start writing-up every tiny thing, as has been done to me recently. Can ya'll step-up and support me in resisting this? It is so hard to be bashed constantly, when I KNOW I am doing a good job and furthermore am making-up for stuff that was not done on the shift before mine without complaint. Ew. I won't do it though. Write-ups are for process issues, system problems. They're not there to rat people out.

That's my new mantra, ya like?

[Jerico, BSN, RN]

The bad apples are idiots.

Keep up your standards and dot your own i and t s.

Never let your quality slip, alwys try to work above reproach.

Do not feed into their negativity, listen more than you speak.

Good always wins in the long haul.

If all that does not work, go to your supervisor and tell her SHE will lose you if she does not manage these things (take her documentation of names, times, issues over TIME) better. Tell her you want to work with professionals, not fools who have nothing better to do but busy their sorry little lives with making othes miserable.

If you have a supervisor worth her salary she will call down the idiots tell them to get their **** together or she will lose them rather than you.

If she does not stick up for you, you need to go work somewhere else.

Do NOT whine or act unsure of yourself, and as I SAID: document over time and do not be afraid to confront these morons BEFORE you approach her.

Be able to say: "Yes, I tried to work it out with these people x number of times" and have that also documented and witnessed with a friend coworker you TRUST.