Please don't eat your young.

Published

as a nursing student i am having a hard time understanding why a good number of nurses are so nasty to nursing students. don't they realize that we are the people who will help fill the shortages in their facilities making their jobs easier? don't get me wrong, i have worked with some great nurses who have been very helpful to me during my clinical rotations. however, the nurses who "eat their young" should know that nursing students compare notes. we warn each other about facilities or units where the nurses have treated us poorly and do not apply for jobs in those places. if your facility has a staffing shortage, being nice to student nurses may help fill the gap later on.

please don't beat your dog.

i'm sorry that you've been on units or at facilities where you percieve the staff as treating you poorly. have you thought about taking a look at your own half of the interaction to see what you may have done to irritate those nurses who you think treated you poorly? or have you thought about the idea that the nastiness may be entirely in your perception?

please don't label a whole profession because you've had bad experiences with a few people.

anytime i have a bad experience with a nurse i evaluate my interaction with them to make sure i am not the problem. as a matter of fact, i look at the situation before hand to make sure i am approaching him or her the right way in order to avoid problems. my instructors and even some of the staff members comment on my professionalism. my gripe is with those nurses who treat us students like we are idiots. i realize we are there to learn. i understand that you know much more about nursing than i do, i respect that fact. however, i had a nurse on my last rotation yell at me and tell me i didn't know how to take a bp because i politely alerted her about my pt's elevated bp. "it is not! i just took it!" she snipped. she rushed back into the room to check it again "i told you it was normal!" she said in a huff and darted out the room. the problem was that the nurse had developed a bad habit of checking bp's took quickly. my pt. was an elderly woman with a very slow pulse, if you take the bp too quickly it is going to give you a false reading. oh never mind me, i'm just the dumb student getting in her way :rolleyes:. believe me i could give you more examples.

i am not saying that this is the case with most nurses, it is not. all i am saying is that there seems to be a problem with a lot of student and some of the nurses out there. most of the nurses i have come across have been great, but like it or not some nurses have it in for us (imho).

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Psych, Informatics, Biostatistics.

Kiren, I support you. I feel some of these postings are from people with their head in the sand.

I have been a nurse since 1984, I still feel the "nurses eat their young" syndrome especially when I change fields. I can't give a good reason for it. I can tell you its been a syndrome since I started nursing.

Maybe that's why we can't attract new people and keep the ones we have? Maybe the profession needs to get its head out of the sand to take a good hard look at this syndrome?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

And maybe some people don't have their heads in the sand and see things clearly. There is no syndrome at work here-----but there ARE bullies in every career field. Nursing is no different.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in nursery, L and D.
And maybe some people don't have their heads in the sand and see things clearly. There is no syndrome at work here-----but there ARE bullies in every career field. Nursing is no different.

:yeahthat:

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med-Surg.
I am not saying that this is the case with most nurses, it is not. All I am saying is that there seems to be a problem with a lot of student and some of the nurses out there. Most of the nurses I have come across have been great, but like it or not some nurses have it in for us (imho).

Understood. There are nurses out there like that. Also remember the persective of the student, is the perspective of the student and is sometimes skewed incorrectly to negatively view the nurse. Often things are interpreted as being rude when it's simply something else. But I agree with you 100% there are some student haters out there. I work with a couple. I also work others that love students but sometimes just get weary week after week day after day and sometimes just need a break. Flame me if you will, but it's not always an honor and a privilege to have you. And if I look askance when the 10th student approaches me for the day, don't come here screaming "why do nurses eat their young!", I'm just tired and stressed and trying to get my work done (that you presume you are doing for me). I came across a group of students talking "I can't believe the nasty dressing left on that patient. The nurses here are nasty." We had specific instructions from the surgeon to leave the dressing on. Oh, I can match you story for story of students who take joy in superiority to the staff nurses they visit in clinicals. Like it or not, there are students out there like that.

I appreciate that you clarify that it's not most nurses. You do need a place where you can vent your bad experiences with nurses, and I appreciate that.

Any nurse that yells at work needs management attention. I hope you reported this nurse because being short and dismissive is one thing, "yelling" is another.

That's it for this thread. I'll add my two cents in the next nurses eat their young thread. :)

With respect.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Psych, Informatics, Biostatistics.
And maybe some people don't have their heads in the sand and see things clearly. There is no syndrome at work here-----but there ARE bullies in every career field. Nursing is no different.

I disagree. Nursing is DIFFERENT. I have worked in many different industries in many parts of the continent. In no other occupation have I ever seen such "bullying."

Nursing needs to recognize and change this problem so we can keep and train good people and ease the nursing shortage. The problem should be addressed, and no I don't know how to change it. But not recognizing it is not going to make it go away.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med-Surg.
I disagree. Nursing is DIFFERENT. I have worked in many different industries in many parts of the continent. In no other occupation have I ever seen such "bullying."

Nursing needs to recognize and change this problem so we can keep and train good people and ease the nursing shortage. The problem should be addressed, and no I don't know how to change it. But not recognizing it is not going to make it go away.

Agree to disagree. Nursing is not unique as a profession that fosters bullying.

But yes, nursing is different because you can't compare the bullying that goes on in nursing, with the bullying that goes on in the "dog eat dog world" business world, medical school, a newsroom, or a hair salon. Every place is different.

I've been lucky, probably because as I guy I've never been bullied in nursing. I don't see nurses eat their young or being bullied. Of course I know it's out there and occurs, but I'm not 100% convinced it's a "nursing issue". But if a bully causes one new grad to leave us, that's one new grad too many and perhaps it is a nursing issue. Definately an issue that needs not to be swept under the rug.

Also, perhaps because I was truly bullied throughout my childhood and adolences for being "different" in a town and time period when that wasn't cool, a lot of what I read here is not bullyingin my eyes. I see a lot of overaction on the part of people who post here. Yeah I'll get flamed here, but I have a high tolerance for everyday rudeness and don't consider it bullying. I choose my battles and while I have a high tolerance doesn't mean I accept rude and mean people. Fortunately 99% of the people I come across on a daily basis are neutral to friendly, and I can deal with the rest. Trust me if I was ever bullied, I would know it and they wouldn't even go there again.

I don't have any answers either, but I decline to buy into the idea that I'm part of a culture that bullies and eats their young. No we're not angles of mercy either.

Does bullying in the workplace need addressing? Absolutely.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Telemetry, Nursery, Post-Partum.

I don't think I was ever "eaten" when I was a student or a new grad. I did have some less then pleasant interactions with nurses that still happens from time to time. The bad clinical experiences I had, ones were the nurses didn't want to teach us, weren't friendly, sort of pushed us off to the side as much as possible also happened to be the ones were the clinical instructor would disappear when we hit the floor. Of course they didn't want to take full responsibility for us, that was our instructors role, to guide us, supervise meds, etc; let the nurses know what we could and couldn't do. So, any students out there who are unhappy with their clinical encounters, take another look at it...where's your instructor when all this "eating" is going on?

And, like others have already said, maybe the nurse is having a bad, bad day. Maybe she/he doesn't feel they have the time (or patience) to teach, etc that day. Its hard to preceptor someone! I didn't fully understand that till I got to the point I was precepting people...it can be extremely difficult to know when to step in, when to let go, how to teach something you just know. And also, many students are only there for 6 hours or so at a time, so you may be briefly doing "all the work" but the nurse has to not only watch everything you've done all day (almost double work, but not quite) and then be prepared to jump back in at the end of the day. Its not easy, and somedays its hard to have the right attitude.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

if the catchphrase "nurses eat their young" had been in vogue when i was a new grad, i would have been convinced i was being eaten. i was a brand new bsn grad in a hospital that had it's own diploma program -- a mistake i didn't even realize i'd made until the "eating" commenced. from the start, i was made more than aware that i just didn't measure up to a diploma graduate. the charge nurses banded together and went to my head nurse (that's what we called them then) to demand that i be fired and that she hire a diploma grad in my stead.

although i didn't realize it at the time, i was making things much worse for myself than they needed to be. i was shy and didn't socialize with my co-workers from the start. i spoke when spoken to, or to ask questions. some of the questions i asked were dumb questions. if i'd kept my eyes open instead of being huddled into my misery, i would have seen the answers to those questions and not branded myself as being hopelessly dumb from the start. (once a group has that opinion of you, it's next to impossible to change it.) i didn't have a preceptor -- i was the first bsn grad this particular nursing unit had hired, and they had no idea what to do with me. my clinicals consisted of two hours in the evening to pick your patient and read up on them, and then four hours the next morning. that suited me just fine because i needed the afternoons for the three part time jobs i always had going to work my way through school! but i'd only inserted one iv, one ng tube, no foleys . . . you get the picture. i was totally inadequate. with a decent preceptor to coach me through it, it would have been ok.

with 20/20 hindsight, i can see what i contributed to my negative interactions with my co-workers. some of them were guilty of bullying, perhaps, but most were just flummoxed by a new orientee that didn't perform anywhere close to the new orientees they were used to -- those that had actually run charge for their last semester of school and who were used to staffing a unit on the night shift. i couldn't quit because i was supporting a husband and paying back my school loans. i was so miserable, i was walking around with a huge "kick me" sign on my back, and my co-workers obliged. after two years of misery, i was an ok nurse, but it took moving to a new city and a new job before i was ever viewed as competent . . . and there's another story of bullying. i didn't have to go through any of that.

so, in a roundabout way, i come to my point:

in these boards, it seems as if most posters see the problem as older, more experienced nurses not being nice enough to the poor, innocent newbie who has no contribution to all of these negative interactions inflicted upon them. rarely do i see a newbie saying that they've examined their own contributions to the problem and tried to alter their own behavior because of that examination; rarely to i see a poster suggest to the newbie that they do just that.

communication is a two way street. it's rare that one person is totally perfect and the other is a horrible, mean human being who is nasty to them for no good reason. yes, nancy nurse may be having a horrible day and she snapped at a newbie, but perhaps the reason she picked you to snap at instead of the other newbie standing right next to you is that you have been an annoying little weasel from the get-go while your compatriot there has been friendly, helpful and is seen to be genuinely trying while you look to be a self-entitled jerk looking out for number one and attempting to weasel out of work. (please understand that i'm not commenting on anyone personally -- i've never met any of you and don't know how charming or annoying you may or may not be.) maybe that older nurse you're quick to accuse of eating her young may just not like you for some reason that you have total control over. on the other hand, maybe it is her -- and you remind her of her husband's mistress or some such.

but please, please please take away from my rant here that if you feel you're being unfairly picked on, please spend some time honestly examining your own part in these interactions. perhaps with 20/20 hingsight, you'll realize that much of it really is your fault. certainly, part of it is your fault. with time spent in self-examination perhaps you can alter those behaviors of yours that are putting everyone's teeth on edge so that it won't take you two miserable years and a cross-country move to turn things around!

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I have to disagree with the blame the victim, one could be Mother Theresa and still be eaten.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

As I've mentioned on other threads, I didn't start nursing school until I was 38. I worked in many different kinds of jobs and in ALL of them I encountered rude people and yes, bullies. I was sexually harassed at one.

Count me in as a nurse who would like to see the phrase "nurses eat their young" done away with.

I would like to see colleges address the bullying behavior of some people though - in all career choices.

steph

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Telemetry, Nursery, Post-Partum.
if the catchphrase "nurses eat their young" had been in vogue when i was a new grad, i would have been convinced i was being eaten. i was a brand new bsn grad in a hospital that had it's own diploma program -- a mistake i didn't even realize i'd made until the "eating" commenced. from the start, i was made more than aware that i just didn't measure up to a diploma graduate. the charge nurses banded together and went to my head nurse (that's what we called them then) to demand that i be fired and that she hire a diploma grad in my stead.

although i didn't realize it at the time, i was making things much worse for myself than they needed to be. i was shy and didn't socialize with my co-workers from the start. i spoke when spoken to, or to ask questions. some of the questions i asked were dumb questions. if i'd kept my eyes open instead of being huddled into my misery, i would have seen the answers to those questions and not branded myself as being hopelessly dumb from the start. (once a group has that opinion of you, it's next to impossible to change it.) i didn't have a preceptor -- i was the first bsn grad this particular nursing unit had hired, and they had no idea what to do with me. my clinicals consisted of two hours in the evening to pick your patient and read up on them, and then four hours the next morning. that suited me just fine because i needed the afternoons for the three part time jobs i always had going to work my way through school! but i'd only inserted one iv, one ng tube, no foleys . . . you get the picture. i was totally inadequate. with a decent preceptor to coach me through it, it would have been ok.

with 20/20 hindsight, i can see what i contributed to my negative interactions with my co-workers. some of them were guilty of bullying, perhaps, but most were just flummoxed by a new orientee that didn't perform anywhere close to the new orientees they were used to -- those that had actually run charge for their last semester of school and who were used to staffing a unit on the night shift. i couldn't quit because i was supporting a husband and paying back my school loans. i was so miserable, i was walking around with a huge "kick me" sign on my back, and my co-workers obliged. after two years of misery, i was an ok nurse, but it took moving to a new city and a new job before i was ever viewed as competent . . . and there's another story of bullying. i didn't have to go through any of that.

so, in a roundabout way, i come to my point:

in these boards, it seems as if most posters see the problem as older, more experienced nurses not being nice enough to the poor, innocent newbie who has no contribution to all of these negative interactions inflicted upon them. rarely do i see a newbie saying that they've examined their own contributions to the problem and tried to alter their own behavior because of that examination; rarely to i see a poster suggest to the newbie that they do just that.

communication is a two way street. it's rare that one person is totally perfect and the other is a horrible, mean human being who is nasty to them for no good reason. yes, nancy nurse may be having a horrible day and she snapped at a newbie, but perhaps the reason she picked you to snap at instead of the other newbie standing right next to you is that you have been an annoying little weasel from the get-go while your compatriot there has been friendly, helpful and is seen to be genuinely trying while you look to be a self-entitled jerk looking out for number one and attempting to weasel out of work. (please understand that i'm not commenting on anyone personally -- i've never met any of you and don't know how charming or annoying you may or may not be.) maybe that older nurse you're quick to accuse of eating her young may just not like you for some reason that you have total control over. on the other hand, maybe it is her -- and you remind her of her husband's mistress or some such.

but please, please please take away from my rant here that if you feel you're being unfairly picked on, please spend some time honestly examining your own part in these interactions. perhaps with 20/20 hingsight, you'll realize that much of it really is your fault. certainly, part of it is your fault. with time spent in self-examination perhaps you can alter those behaviors of yours that are putting everyone's teeth on edge so that it won't take you two miserable years and a cross-country move to turn things around!

i think you made some great points. or one great point, it takes at least 2 people to have a negative (or positive) interaction...and you can't control the other person's contribution, only your own. definitely a good point to examine your actions/reactions and see if there is room for adjustment.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion