A story about a nurse who is treated poorly by older nurses in her young career, She is determined to shows kindness to younger nurses but is stepped on and fooled. Does she become bitter, resentful, and carry on older tradition of eating the young ? Or, does she make peace with it and learn we are all human and such is life.
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The phrase "nurses eat their young" is often said. I learned it quite early in my career. I was perplexed on why an older, wiser nurse would not want to show me the ropes, why they would they not want to guide me and mold me to their perfect mini me. Most of the time nurses did not want to be bothered with training others, they did not have time or they just plain did not care. Many times I was just left to fend for myself wondering if I was going to make a major error or worse actually kill somebody because nobody wanted to take the time to speak to me or give me eye contact. I promised early in my career I was never going to be to like that. I would always make that nurse feel welcomed and comfortable in coming to me for advice or questions. Feeling unwanted was such a horrible feeling.
I came through with all my promises year after year through many different types of jobs. I have always had the mentality that I treated people just how I wanted to be treated. It worked just find most of my life until 2013.
As the years move on...
I came across a person that I had never encountered before in my life. I met Shelly in June she was bubbly, fresh, not the sharpest tool in the shed but was so sweet. I invested quite a bit of time working with her, building her self-esteem up. Explaining reports and charts. The jobs we had at that time had a lot to do with marketing so we spent hours doing role playing on marketing scenarios. I taught her how to analyze reports, and compare it to our competitors. I was so proud of her on how well she caught on.
Well, there is also another saying "Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me". Shelly was playing me! She was collecting data the entire time in order to further here career, to take a jump forward. Shelly then moved forward in the company received an award with the information I gave her and claimed it as her own. Shelly got a pay raise and I stayed at the same rate. Shelly also moved up in positions and I stayed in the same position. I was so angry and upset. The thoughts that went through my head first, besides running her pretty blonde head over with my car was, This is why us older, wiser nurses eat our young. Yes I did run in the mirror and double checked. I have become that older nurse overnight. I am now protective of my knowledge. I felt worse now than when I was that young kid nurse who barely knew anything. I felt like I was tricked, I felt old, out played and too slow. This was never going to happen to me again, I told myself. I was never a ladder climber...but I certainly was not going to sit here and hold the dame thing while others climbed it!
Common ground...
So where is the common ground? Where you do stand where you not have to eat your younger coworkers for breakfast, lunch or dinner, and you do not completely give them all of your trade secrets? Why this phrase is only said in the nursing field? Are we to be exempt from this type of behavior because our job is for caring for others? Do we have some sort of godly quality that makes us magical or something?
My promise...
I can promise to be kind to others, be caring and I can reflect on that one act to not be true to every young nurse out there, and not every older nurse eats their young. We all have knowledge to share and the only way this knowledge is going to be passed on is to share it and we will have to take that leap of faith as we do everyday as we care for or patients to empowers those who will be there when we can no longer go on.
