Professional relationship issues

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Specializes in education,LTC, orthopedics, LTACH.

:rolleyes:as we all know, a large part of being nurse involves conflict with other professionals. my students recently witnessed some incivility with the unit secretary. when this ocurred, a student brought to my attention that such behaviors are rampant in the class. the examples she gave were common, more in high school though i thought. she cited cliques, undermining, fault finding, lack of information sharing, starting untrue rumors, not working together at clinical, etc.

honestly, i wasn't aware of this during this year. i know we had many of these problems two years ago, it just seemed to be due to several strong possibly borderline personalities. is this type of behavior just part of life, or can we give some skills to help them face this now, and in the workplace? i know my director has had this mentioned to her, and her take on it, is "they need to grow up". she tries not to "feed into it" but we did have an instance where students said another was stealing, and it was untrue, and we were concerned about defamation of character...

anyway, does anyone have any good resources for this or any ideas?

anyone else see these issues?

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

this is happening in the work force too. People are aggressive and hateful, just like the characters on TV and movies. Tell your students that you cannot change the world but they do not have to let the world change them. If needed, they can ignore everyone else and just get their work done, pass and become the smart-mouth's manager one day, as negative people do not get promoted as often.

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What you are describing has been described in detail in the literature!! It is called horizontal violence...also known as bullying. Literature describes this phenomenon as a prevalent behavior among nurses. It is very unfortunate. One study I read found that 50% of new grads consider leaving the profession within their first year due to the way they are treated by colleagues. We, as educators, have to educate ourselves about this issue. We can educate students as to what horizontal violence is, how to identify it, how to react to it, and most of all....that it is NOT ACCEPTABLE! It has to begin in the education process if we are going to make a change to future work environments. Take a look at the literature on this topic...it is abundant.

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I think it would go a long way to improve matters if the subject of horizontal violence were addressed in nursing school. And as for the occurring behavior, a good learning activity if there ever was one. Something along the lines of forced comradeship as found in the military, for two people who are not cooperating with each other. Give them something to do together that requires cooperation and don't take no for an answer. They stay on the project until everyone pulls their weight and they are "nice" to each other as evidenced by group and instructor evaluations. But then, we are dealing with people and people are going to treat each other how they want to no matter what the outside intervention. Good luck dealing with this.

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Specializes in cardiac, stepdown, ICU.

I have been a nurse for 18 plus years, I have witnessed incivility, bullying or horizontal violence as it is being called these days place at almost every place I have worked. Including being a travel RN for 6 years. I have been a victim and I have also dished it out and am guilty of behaving unprofessional.

I agree there needs to be a workshop in nursing school for this and continuing education for the work place. I am currently working on a project for my hospital that will address this and teach techniques to nurses to deal without when experienced. Also the workshop will have the individual take accountability for their own actions when they are the perpetrator.

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I have been a victim of horizontal violence in nursing school from an RN Instructor who has targeted me since the begining of the program. One year left, and I get suspended. This instructor has verbally abused me in front of classmates, degrades classmates during clinicals in front of the other nurses, and her lies are what has ultimately got me suspended. I have an attorney and am apealing, however, this is the end of my career if something doesn't change. I'm an honor student, in my 40's, and have never experienced this type of evil, malicious, and manipulative behavior. I have been devestated since all of this has been allowed to happen. I have reported her behavior 4 times before a story was concocted to get me suspended. Nothing was ever done, it was totally ignored. I have looked high and low for nursing student advocates and have not found any. Does anyone have any wisdom they can offer?

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Specializes in psych, addictions, hospice, education.

Long ago I read an article about the "Queen Bee Syndrome" in nursing. According to the author, this syndrome is responsibile for how some nurses treat other nurses, and is also responsible for what has been called "eating our young." I couldn't find the article I read, but here's one on the syndrome in general. I think it's worth thinking about.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/508715/the_queen_bee_syndrome_do_you_see_other.html

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