Bloodman

I have worked both in teaching and in care-giving and have been victimized by gossip in both settings. It doesn't seem to matter how gifted one is intellectually or hard one works. I was often thought of as both, but there were co-workers in each setting making up stories, lies, etc. about me which negatively impacted my career. I worked in nursing for roughly 6 and half years before leaving due to the incessant, deleterious nature of the gossip. Over the course of my years I heard I had Aids, was having sex with co-workers, killed patients with errors, saw my incident reports thrown in the garbage, and had secret write-ups that would mysteriously appear in my file without warning. None of it was ever accurate and almost all of it never happened, but human resources individuals and "conscientious" managers saw to it that I was put in my place. It was just ridiculous. I should have known better than to leave nursing school without realizing some classmates were already working on manipulating clinical instructors with their gossip and fairy-tales about what was going on. Being older, the first thing I realized after the first couple years was younger people didn't have the same work ethic. I got tired of lazy co-workers, ignorant charge nurses, being told what to do by people 10-15 years younger than me with no common sense. Gossip is part of the normal, female social milieu. That's why this will always go on and be accepted. Dealing with people directly is more often a male trait, which is why many female nurses stare at the floor and then run and gossip to co-workers when a male doctor is obnoxious. Running to supervisors and managers is also more of a female way of doing things. I rarely if ever did this. When I spoke to a supervisor or manager about hot-water issues, it was usually because a female co-worker ran to one and made secret allegations first. The problem was most managers I had bestowed instant credibility to the first person who ran to them to tattle-tale. They encouraged the secret trashing of co-workers inadvertently or deliberately (I don't which) when co-workers realized they never had to face the person they were trashing to the manager. Every manager I had was female. Again, gossip is a given, accepted aspect of female socialization (and I do think most nurses out there will agree). Therefore, it was almost always recognized as "the right thing to do" by managers. Those superiors who bought into this method of dealing with problems were in fact the problems themselves. In their zeal to "control the unit", they victimized hard-working nurses (male & female) who didn't buy into the secret gossip method of dealing with co-workers. As I said, I fell victim to some pretty outlandish fairy-tales told by a few co-workers, often by the same ones who covered up errors and falsified records. What a world we live in when 85-90% of the public have the mistaken notion that nursing is one of the most ethical professions there is. I've worked with manual laborers with no education who are far more ethically sound than many nurses I worked with.

This is the problem in nursing to begin with. You have people too ignorant to realize when something is illegal. No one can force you to report to work 2, 3, or4 shifts in advance. Are they paying you for all that time? Probably not. Here's the solution to anyone out there. You get a physician to sign a disability form stating you can't work anymore than so many hours in a row period. This will supersede ANY facility policy like this, which would be illegal anyway, and make idiots like this DON legally liable for firing you in this case. I would tell her to kiss my ass.

Your story is nothing new. Similar things happened to me also. They lied to me about the floor availability for jobs, and then wouldn't let me leave the cruddy floor I was on after a year even. Nursing is all about deception. Facilities deceiving the public, management deceiving workers, workers deceiving each other, and workers deceiving patients.

This is one of the big jokes in nursing. Every facility I've worked in covers up employee incidents, so they don't have to pay workman's compensation, number one, and so they don't get publicity for the incident, number two. Facilities don't care about you; you're just a piece of meat to them.

The main problem here was bashing this one guy's behavior to such a degree, when nursing is 95% made up of females. Most of the time I worked as a nurse, I heard inappropriate sex talk from females, always initiated by females, and always overlooked by female supervisors/managers. The fact is they are hypocrites. That is all ok, but then when a guy speaks inappropriately we have to write him up, report him, discipline him, etc. I've even heard the argument that "well we(guys) don't have to fear being raped by women." This kind of reasoning excuses their(femalenurse) inappropriateness? Other than the stupidity I witnessed in nursing school, I never realized just how ignorant some female nurses can be. I'm not defending this guy's behavior, but do we really need to waste space repeating how inappropriate he was? I'm simply pointing out why HIS behavior is being dwelled upon so much in comparison to the multitude of females that talk inappropriately in hospitals every shift. I guess it's just easier to have an audience to bash 5% of guys like this, as well as in the workplace, when 95% of nurses are female. I would have hoped for better.

I think alot of people on this thread are over-reacting. The other side to this situation, besides females that harrass without consequences, is patients that grossly misperceive what male nurses are doing. I've merely walked into patient rooms simply to domy job, and have had elderly patients cry out that I didn't belong in their room,etc. Then a parade of female co-workers come running in, listening to the patient's endless babbling (senility), only to give me dirty looks. All a guy needs are a few of these incidents and you're drummed out the door, based on the misperceptions and stupidity of patients and co-workers. Much of this judgmental behavior by co-workers and employers is based on how well they like you or how much they value you, which of course has nothing to do with what actually happened. This is quite a harsh penalty to pay for someone who goes to nursing school, finishes on top, and then is treated like a pariah in the workplace by co-workers and patients with idiotic notions.

I find it humorous that a male nurse is actually singled out to the degree spoken of here. 95% of nursing consists of females,yet I found many of them to be inappropriate over the years with absolutely no consequences. I've been inappropriately hugged, leaned on, kissed, and have had my assed grabbed by female nurses. No one that witnessed any of these events ever commented to me or supported me in thinking that there was inappropriate behavior. Then again, why would they,when the ones that witnessed these events were females? From my experience, both as a victim and a witness in the workplace, especially in nursing, females just tend to have blinders on when acts are committed by other females.

The bottom line in nursing is the bottom line. Administrators don't care about anything or anyone. Nursing will never change until laws are made or changed to protect nurses. The first thing that needs to happen is a national union. You have no power without the backing of an organization, and the corrupt hospital hierarchy to deal with. From pushy and pathetically corrupt human resources people to nurse managers that cover up errors for favored employees, I've seen it all. Nurses, especially honest ones that stand alone, are always on the chopping block. If it isn't repeated, extremely petty write-ups and "disciplinary" action that they pick at you with, it will be damaging gossip about your competence or credibility (which of course is totally false). In extreme cases, they will deliberately sabotage you by putting things in your personnel file, which inspectors can see, that you don't know about, or they may even tamper with your work (which is illegal of course, but who cares when the hospital is trying to push you out the door?). The law supposedly allows you to look in your file once or twice a year, but what's to stop them from removing things from your file and then putting them back in after you've viewed it? Nothing. Think about it. Why did it take over a hundred years after nursing started to pass a whistleblower law? The one we have isn't very good anyway; because, who is going to want to work at the same facility after you blow the whistle anyway? They'll be watching you to get you for anything every second you're working after that. Who is going to hire you after you blow the whistle also? These cases are often publicized and are in the newspaper or on television, at least locally. Aside from all this, there are the false drug diversion accusations, which I've seen myself, and the ultimate game facilities play: we'll go after your license. No, nursing will not change much; because, we really don't care about sick people in this world as much as the almighty dollar and the sacred protection of our corrupt healthcare facilities run by guys wearing suits, who always have lower guys/girls in appropriate business attire to either show you the door or push you through it, while they return to their colleagues and power lunch and share a story about how they just got rid of another "problem" nurse.

I would avoid bringing a doctor note either before or after you get hired. You simply get hired at a facility that does not impose overtime or mandatory shifts. I did this and it worked fine for me. I do believe they will secretly discriminate against you otherwise in some way, especially if the floor you work on is revamped in terms of staffing shifts, etc. If you can't find a facility that doesn't have mandatory overtime, I would bring the note after hire, and then only if it's that much of an immediate issue, or when the issue rises. I was worried considerably about my health issue being forced while working, but the job never impacted it. Is it possible you're worrying too much ahead of time? You sound like a smart girl. I hope this helps a little. Bye.

It's outrageous that people on here are suggesting that nurses should leave and go somewhere else. This is exactly why nursing is the way it is. Everyone runs out the door to another job; because, nursing jobs are a dime a dozen. The problem here is that the power structures are corrupt to begin with in healthcare, especially nursing. The power structure is not interested in improving anything, just in ridding themselves of nurses (like myself) that speak up. They will write you up continuously for either petty nonsense or make up things that you didn't do until you leave or are fired. They just don't care, period. State Boards don't care either; because, I called several times only to be told nothing. They won't commit to a response one way or the other. Boards in some states are corrupt. We have to earn a living too, and I resent when people tell me I have to leave a job because no one in the power structure is doing their job. I have seen verbal/physical abuse of a patient right in front of me, only to be told by the nursing supervisor that the perpetrator "was so remorseful." She did absolutely nothing. What I saw was nothing short of a criminal offense. I went right up the ladder about it, only to be retaliated against repeatedly. Unless other people stand up with you, and most nurses won't, you're not going to get anything accomplished. This is why I no longer work as a fulltime nurse. It's really pathetic.

There are other things to consider that you're not thinking of prune. Don't work on a floor with 12 hour employees, if you are an 8; because, they will manipulate assignments into giving you the worst assignment patientwise. You will arrive for work after they've all worked for 4 hours already, and they will change their assignments to make it easier for themselves before you arrive. I did this, so I know. I also have a health issue to consider, but moving to 12 hours was better in the end because there was more down time to rest. I would say if you're going to do 12, do it over night. If you have to do 12 during the day and pm shift, then I'd think about it more. Make sure you work in a facility that has no mandatory overtime like I did; otherwise, make sure you have a doctor note permanently limiting your shift hours right after you're hired.