Knowledge or Information Hoarding

sorry, nothing relevant to add but your coworker was a jacka$$.

did they not chart whatever this was?

If it is a *big* deal or really could have adversely affected pt care, I'd consider my options carry the matter further.

That is just wrong. Wrong, wrong. We are here to serve the pt's best interest, not to test each other's mettle. Wrong, wrong. Talk to your boss.

I couldn't even imagine that! The facility I work for may be small, but I've never encountered that and I've been cross trained and worked all the units. I'd hate to see someone like that come into our family they would either change their stripes or place of employment if this is a co-worker are they insecure about something? or just mean spirited?

that is a form of passive agression and may be a violation of your facility's Code of Conduct. Make sure you have a witness when you call them on it.

OP, are you working on your PhD

Never if pt safety is a concern! Will I let them take a min to figure out why the pump's still beeping at them when I can see the clamped line? Yeah, but if they don't see it soon, I'll point it out. Also, absolutely nothing to make them seem incompetent. Or I'll ask them "Why are we doing this?" to try and get them to exercise their critical thinking and figure out why something's happening, but again, never if I'm actively concerned about patient safety (that'd be better done in a recap after the event).

Bigger issue for me are nurses who don't want all the information at report time because they are too busy chatting about what they did last night with a coworker, texting or just generally not interested ......consequently these same nurses don't know how to give report at the end of their shift and so it is not information hoarding but just not having a clue

I think it depends on how you would define information hoarding. Are we talking about the experienced nurse not telling a new grad what a drug is in an effort for them to encourage finding out on their own? I've seen plenty of folks complain about that but I don't really consider it such a bad thing...

Or, are we talking about watching you give depakote IVP rather than telling you that it needs to infused over an hour (or saying you can't give it IVP and need to look up the proper administration).

Sometimes giving information will make a person's job easier, but that's not always the best way for them to learn. Allowing a patient to come to harm rather than provide information is a bad thing, allowing a co-worker the opportunity to figure something out on their own (even if they'd rather be spoon fed!) may not be.

Some examples of what I'm referring to are not giving complete information in order to make the other nurse look incompetent. Or knowing someone is going to do a procedure or give a medication incorrectly and letting them do it in spite of the fact that it may hurt the patient. I'm not referring to letting a new nurse figure out problems on his/her own when it doesn't cause the patient any harm.

I'm in a DNP program. I've had experience with this type of behavior in the past and was just curious about others having the same experience. I also collaterally work with someone who hoards knowledge. I'm looking for some approaches to take with this person.

Thanks for your posts so far!

I can relate to this. I work with a nurse who will pass things on in report like, "We're still putting cream on that area." So, I ask..."What cream to what area?" and she responds with, "You don't know? Jeez...check the treatment sheets!" When I check the treatment sheets, I find something like, "Kenalog to affected area BID." I end up spending fifteen minutes going through the chart to find out what the affected area is. I also seem to walk out of report a lot and hear something like, "Your next neuro is at seven." When I ask for more information, I get responses like, "After someone falls, we do neuro checks!" One nurse also does things like get orders for lab and not put it in the lab book, yet is annoyed when the night shift doesn't manage to get the urine sample or draw the blood. When the night nurse defends herself by saying it wasn't in the book, the day nurse says things like, "I don't have time to do everything!" We also seem to have a bad habit of only passing things on to one shift and that is it. Things like a cancer diagnosis, medication changes, falls, change in condition, etc need to be passed on for several days.

I don't think all of it is intentional. Sometimes I think we just forget that just because we know something, that not everyone else does. I also think that friendships outside of work can cause problems. There have been many times something has happened in my shift and when I try to pass it on in report the next day, everyone already knows about it. We have a lot of employees who are socialize outside of work and they seem to spend a lot of time talking about work!