Interesting colleage

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

Back ground. I work in a LTC facility. We have a hospital and rest home side. I am the RN in charge of the hospital wing. I work with one enrolled nurse (LVN) and have a team of four-five CNAs.

I have been working there for close to a month and had experienced moments of down right snarkyness from this nurse in that time. On Friday she fairly much stood in the nurses station and barked orders at me, I was so gob smacked I didnt say anything

On the same day we had an incident where due to a doctors dodgy charting a patient ended up getting twice as much fentanyl patch as she should have. This nurse told me that it wasnt an incident and we didnt need to do the incident form. I did the form. In terms of experience I realise I'm still fairly green however were it to come back to us and be a problem I knew no one would accept "Because the enrolled nurse told me I didnt have to"

I realise that I need to find a way of being politely assertive with her and may even need to call rank. Having come from a job where it was all RNs and ENs and we worked as a cohesive team this is all really new to me. I dont want to have to get snarky with this lady however on the other hand, all members of the team myself included to address each other with basic courtesy.

So experienced colleagues how do you deal with this when it happens. Ideas for becoming more assertive much appreciated

[AJJKRN]

Honestly, when someone snips at me I snip back with my initial answer or comment but then I keep the conversation as civil and respectful as I can after that. I find that sometimes it is all about establishing boundaries about how you are willing to be treated. I won't stand to be disrespected unless I'm completely caught off guard at the time but I always try to show that I am respectful and helpful when treated as such. Good luck they may just be worried that you are not going to value their experience there but they have an inappropriate way of showing it.

[Tenebrae, BSN, RN]

Update: I was on shift with an interesting colleage. Several incidences were she tried to order me around. Stupid things like wanting to watch a dressing I was doing. This lady works four out of five weekend days and to be honest and has had ample opportunity to watch this wound change previously , also this patient had previously made a comment that he did not like this lady and to be honest, having him in a vulnerable position with someone looking simply for the sake of it didn't fly with me either.

I will put money on the fact that she is not happy that I chose to assert myself. I have absolutely no desire for one upman ship or pulling rank. The experience with this colleague has given me a rude wake up call I have realized that sometimes I do actually need to to assert myself. I am used to being on a team with all registered nurses, its a very new experience being the one in charge of the shift.

[Gooselady, BSN, RN]

Long time lurker, first post :) I think in every single job I've had in 20 years of nursing, there's always one person who sort of takes up that role or behavior. Kind of the class bully, a limit pusher, uses this angry affect to intimidate. It IS inappropriate behavior, and hard to know what to do. I'm not the sort to 'snap back', I don't have it in me. I also don't cower and ask how high to jump next time.

Why not go to your manager and give a brief run down of the behavior -- literally write down a few shifts of 'episodes' no matter how small or insignificant. Use factual, unemotional description only. AND -- very important! -- ask your manager if she could help you out with advice on how to professionally handle this within the scope of your job description. You really want to know because it's making you want to look for another job. You've (at least) thrown 3 stones at one bird (poor birdie). Your manager has a factual, clinical list of the bad behaviors, she will respect you sharing this WHILE asking for help to cope (rather than ***** and whine) and poke her/him in the fanny that it's so unhappy for you that you're about to quit.

It could be you don't have useful 'authority' over this coworker. It could be the 99th time she's been complained about. You'll get an idea of how your manager chooses to deal with difficult employees for YOUR information. A manager who is conflicophobic won't really have your back and bad behavior is basically tolerated. Do you want to work for a place with those kind of 'values'? In other words, there's a LOT of important information for you and hopefully an opportunity for you to get some much needed support dealing with her. It is very tough, and it's not your fault or your 'bad' that you haven't bitten her head off yet and 'put her in her place'. Some nurses are great at doing that but I'm not. There are more ways to skin a cat (sorry for all the animal metaphors) than one.