Nurses Eat Their Young

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How often have you witnessed or experienced peer to peer bullying as a nurse?

Often

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I've encountered one person who was very evil to all coworkers and focused on me for awhile, at which point it came to and end. Serious MH issues were involved.

As far as protracted, calculated, purposeful bullying mixed with random acts of hate and basic daily incivility, that is found mostly at the top of nursing structures and is accomplished in ways that affect everyone. In fact, being individually bullied by anyone other than the first issue I described - nope.

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

Actual bullying in which a person consciously targets a specific other person? Very rarely in my 40-year career.

People being generally grouchy to everyone and some "fragile snowflake" who is unable to handle common human behavior under stress taking it personally? Often

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Specializes in Neuroscience.

When I was a green nurse, I thought co-workers were bullying me. I thought the advice they gave was going to lead to the loss of my license. Tonight I asked one of those same co-workers a question about a patient because I couldn't figure it out. She gave me the same advice she had given me as a new nurse, and it's exactly what I needed.

Often what we think is nurse bullying is just a gentle reminder to look for something we should know or learn. Wait a few years and see how you feel about the advice you're being given now.

There was one nurse who bullied another because of her ethnicity. We immediately spoke to the nurse manager and supported the nurse being bullied.

I think a lot depends on the situation. Are you bullying, or being bullied, or are other nurses giving you good advice?

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In spite of reading about it ad nauseam here on AN, I've never witnessed bullying in my 22 years as a nurse. Sorry to disappoint you.

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Specializes in Public Health, TB.

Never by a nurse. Once, by a non-nurse supervisor, once by an MD.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
How often have you witnessed or experienced peer to peer bullying as a nurse?

Twice in forty years of nursing.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
What do you define as bullying? Some young nurses these days consider constructive criticism to be "bullying"....

I think there should be a class in nursing school on taking constructive criticism constructively. There seem to be a good many young nurses who construe any feedback they don't like (or any interaction they don't like) as bullying.

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Have you any thoughts or feedback on your data collection OP?

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Could this be a troll? Do Internet forum users for any subject, from nursing to DIY home repair, not know to check in the search box before they post a question?

I can not feel very sorry for them when they get snarky responses to a basic, not complex, question that has been discussed ad nauseam for several years.

I just Googled ad nauseaum. It's Latin and literally means "to sickness". Then I had to Google literally vs figuratively, my English grammar figuratively sucks. So I'm glad for the post, I actually learned a lot from it.

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Very likely a troll.

1st post on a historically inflammatory topic, 2nd page with no return from OP- yup, looks like a classic AN troll.

OP- are you bored, or do you truly not know how a search function works?

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This goes for nursing too!

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