RN, Clearwing

Unfortunately corrupt leadership in the nursing field is an epidemic. I believe there are some great nurse managers out there who are well educated on the topic of management, have strong morals, strong powers of reasoning and do not feel threatened by some of their staff, but I get the impression from the number of complaints that have "that familiar ring", that great nurse managers are few and far in between. I suspect the great nurses leave the bedside and do not pursue a nurse managers position. I was thinking, maybe nurse managers should be non-nurse individuals with a management degree. It has been my observation that nurse managers possess skills that are too rusty to make a valuable impact on empathizing with staff, many of them are still stuck in "eating their young" or "lateral violence" and find nothing wrong with it because they were abused in that fashion. Women especially in the nursing field can be pretty mean spirited. It doesn't help that modern day nurses suffer from oppressed group syndrome. Yes, I have witnessed the type of malicious behavior you've described and have been on the receiving end of worse. But what can one do about it if nurses don't stick together and are in denial about being treated shabbily? For the person who can't embrace the term "corrupt" when it comes to nurse managers, I strongly suggest you look up the definition. The problem with enablers is that we want to bend things (even the definition of words) to our world and to that which makes us comfortable. If it makes you comfortable to deny how corrupt nurse leadership can be I can appreciate your position, but I'm all about Merriam-Webster's definition and avoiding denial.