I am getting very depressed. I was working in a small OB office until last October. I worked with different women and we had our days but worked things out.
Well, I started at a hospital in October, (career change) and am working in OB. But, within the first 2 hours of work, I noticed something that might be the norm to some of you.
EVERY SINGLE nurse had something bad to say about another. Whether it was about her looks, her work, her anything!!! I didn't listen, as I always form my own opinions about everyone. But the problem is getting worse. It is almost like everyone is stabbing everyone else in the back. Little things, big things. I can't take it!!!!
If someone has a problem with me, I would rather they come to my face and tell me about it. I want EVEYRONE to just get along. I want us all to be NURSES, and be at our job for the patients. To stick together, to stick up for each other. The way that doctors do. But I am learning that nurses eat their own.
I don't know what to do. I interupt someone if they start talking negative about someone else. I don't listen and if I do hear it, I ignore it. I don't put in my 2 cents.
I know that I won't fix the world with this but does anyone have this as a major problem where they work??
I don't know who to trust. A nurse the other day told me to watch out for a couple of nurses who like to report things to administration. One of the nurses I THINK is my friend. BUt now I don't know.
I can't stand the phoniness in someone's actions when two minutes before they were talking really bad about that person. It's like junior high again and I hated junior high. It is another reason that I don't have too many women friends.....which is sad.
I don't know if I am being a victim of the problem but I would like to know, I think. I just don't know if I want to work somewhere like this. What do you think???????
Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.
"Nurse-eating" seems endemic in units in which the nurses are unhappy, morale is low, management is out of touch and overbearing. It also is a feature in most ICU units, especially in the larger teaching hospitals.
I think Barry Adams was the person who coined the term "horizontal violence." I think this sums up the sick phenomenon of "nurse-eating" beautifully. When nurses feel like they are being treated unfairly, that they have no voice in their practice environments, are being abused by TPTB, have very low self-esteem and feel inferior-- well, oftentimes, these clueless nurses will take out their frustrations and bad vibes on their fellow nurses (rather than focusing their frustrations and anger in a positive manner to effect change). It is my firm conviction that "nurse-eating" is a management problem--it starts at the top and is encouraged at the top.
"Nurse-eating" is also a BIG factor in nurse recidivism issues. I, for one, left an ICU unit because of the treacherous atmosphere. Besides feeling like I was back in junior high, I truly felt like my license was in jeopardy just about every shift I was in that unit.
I agree, horizonal violence is so real. There are several very good sites explaining this.
The places of employment that have the >>>sit back and watch, and it will take care of itself........attitudes and management styles, contribute to the abuse.
Horizontal violence is non physical inter group conflict and is manifested in overt and covert behaviours of hostility (Freire 1972; Duffy 1995). It is behaviour associated with oppressed groups and can occur in any arena where there are unequal power relations, and one group's self expression and autonomy is controlled by forces with greater prestige, power and status than themselves (Harcombe 1999). It may be conscious or unconscious behaviour (Taylor 1996). It is, generally, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually damaging behaviour and can have devastating long term effects on the recipients (Wilkie 1996). It may be overt or covert. It is generally non physical, but may involve shoving, hitting or throwing objects. It is one arm of the submissive/aggressive syndrome that results from an internalised self-hatred and low self esteem as a result of being part of an oppressed group (Glass 1997; Roberts 1996; MCCall 1995). It is the inappropriate way oppressed people release built up tension when they are unable to address and solve issues with the oppressor. In the majority of western cultures, a dominator model (Eisler 1993) of social organization enables workplace hierarchy to limit autonomy and practice of various groups of workers and therefore acts as an oppressive force. Workers are socialised into the oppressive structures and unequal power relations of the workplace system. Some groups of people within each particular workplace unconsciously adopt inflated feelings and attitudes of superiority. Some groups adopt unconsciously submissive attitudes, learned helplessness, within the workplace. The internal conflict, generated by conforming to structural pressures and, in some, subduing the desire for autonomy, whilst over inflating it in other groups, compounds the self-hatred and low self esteem of certain groups of people and perpetuates the cycle of horizontal violence (Taylor 1996).
Horizontal Violence is a symptom of the dynamics around oppression and a sense of powerlessness. It is to the workplace culture like water is to fish. It moulds, shapes and dictates the behaviour of those within the workplace culture. It is a form of bullying and acts to socialise those who are different into the status quo. Horizontal violence in the workplace is the result of history and politics in western society and the ideology and practices associated with the socialisation and stereotyping of males and females in western culture. Horizontal violence is a systems and cultural issue, a symptom of an emotionally, spiritually and psychologically toxic and oppressive environment. Horizontal violence is not a symptom of individual pathology, although individual pathology flourishes in a climate that supports and condones aggressive behaviour.
Horizontal violence
Thought I would post this one, I found while surfing.
I agree that the concept of "eating their own" doesn't only exist with nurses. Nor do they only exist within areas where women are predominately employed. I also don't agree that "nurse eating" only occurs in setting where nurses feel disrepected or have low moral.
There are those places where people come into an a great setting, and create turmoil, but because they're unhappy, jealous, discontented, full of self-loathing, lazy, and love to keep some sort of discord going on!
Some people are so filled with anger, that they are little good to themselves let alone anyone else! I have worked in such an situation. I have seen a great setting, disintergate so quickly, that you wouldn't believe it was the same setting. It only takes one person like this to come in, and bring about an total change in the work setting. But when there are more who come on about the same time...it can change things in a heartbeat!
And what happens is they make everyone just as miserable as they are.
Some people just shouldn't be around other people, and definitely shouldn't be in nursing! But they can be very deceptive in hiding who, and what they are, until they destroy any setting they enter. It's like a cancer that eats away, as does considerable damage before it is found and cut out!
VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN
49 Articles; 5,349 Posts
"Nurse-eating" seems endemic in units in which the nurses are unhappy, morale is low, management is out of touch and overbearing. It also is a feature in most ICU units, especially in the larger teaching hospitals.
I think Barry Adams was the person who coined the term "horizontal violence." I think this sums up the sick phenomenon of "nurse-eating" beautifully. When nurses feel like they are being treated unfairly, that they have no voice in their practice environments, are being abused by TPTB, have very low self-esteem and feel inferior-- well, oftentimes, these clueless nurses will take out their frustrations and bad vibes on their fellow nurses (rather than focusing their frustrations and anger in a positive manner to effect change). It is my firm conviction that "nurse-eating" is a management problem--it starts at the top and is encouraged at the top.
"Nurse-eating" is also a BIG factor in nurse recidivism issues. I, for one, left an ICU unit because of the treacherous atmosphere. Besides feeling like I was back in junior high, I truly felt like my license was in jeopardy just about every shift I was in that unit.