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You know, though, there are different power dynamics at work in your sister's situation. An attorney of any status in a law firm has a lot more power over the clerical staff than one new staff nurse does anywhere. Cattiness and pettiness are endemic in areas where people feel powerless and trapped, so they build themselves up by tearing others down. It's sickening, and nurses do practice it to the nth degree, especially on hospital units (big reason why I'm no longer employed in acute care settings). It ceratinly is not unique to nursing. I've spent a lot of time working in family literacy programs, you'd think the women there would be supportive of each other given all they've been through, but noooooooo. Can't wait to start ripping each other apart at the slightest provocation. I guess the only thing I would say is that YOU can't control anyone's behavior, only how you react to it and what you do about it. If someone is a jerk, it's a reflection on them, not you. I don't understand, in this era of the nursing shortage, why nurses choose to stay in jobs where they are abused and unhappy when they don't need to.

There's no excuse for harassing people, and even less for lying to them. I guess I have a much lower tolerance for abuse than most people, because I would have given notice the next day. When I interviewed for my next job, I would have told them exactly why I quit the last one. There's a nursing shortage, folks! We don't need to put up with this nonsense.

We make mistakes. Fortunately, most of them don't kill people! Your physician needs immediately to take responsibility for writing her own orders completely and you need immediately to stop doing it for her.

It's about 40 or 50 miles from York to Portland, all turnpike though. There are actually quite a few small community hospitals in the York/Dover/Portsmouth area. Portsmouth Regional is probably the largest and is always advertising, especially for nurses to work in their cardiac surgical unit.

I am an RN instructor who does not work full time in a hospital and never intends to again for all the reasons above. However, the difference is that I GOT OUT OF IT!! There really is no reason, as an RN in 2005, to stay at any position you hate-there are oceans of opportunity for us beyond hospital confines if you just get out and look. And please do not use the fact that you hate your job as good enough reason to be rude to students in your midst. I will continue to protect my students from people who feel martyred because they CHOSE to be a nurse and CHOOSE to stay in a job they hate.

MMC probably has the best program and never tires of letting everyone within earshot know they were voted one of the top 100 hospitals in America. It's the only teaching hospital in the seacoast area, I believe. Just so you don't die from the sticker shock, the cost of living around here is astoundingly high (I live in the Portland area) and Portsmouth is worse.

If you are looking for staff positions, you shouldn't have any trouble. If you are looking for NP, CNS, instructor positions the well is pretty dry around here and I wouldn't recommend it. Salaries aren't bad but the cost of living in York and Cumberland counties is outrageous, as is any area along the coast.

Thank you for sharing your experience. Obviously part of the issue is that you just had too much for one person to safely do. I am a firm believer-and research backs me up-that for the most part, unless we are completely incompetent (and there are a few incompetent nurses out there, folks-it's not all docs with those issues!) if we are given adequate tools we will do a very good job. This means adequate staffing, equipment that works right and can be found, and adequate administrative support. Yes, while it may ultimately fall to you for not adequately assessing your patient, it's a systems issue more than a competency issue, and it would be a good example to take to your practice committee when you're advocating for more staff, etc.

I'm a nursing instructor in an A/D program, and I disagree w/many of my peers that new nurses need a year of med/surg to "learn the ropes." That's unfair to the unit, the manager, and the hospital to just put your time in and move on (although that's what I did, many years ago...) If you love psych or O/B, there's no reason to waste your time in med/surg. I do tell my students if they're not sure to go for med/surg, because they will get a lot of exposure to different types of patients and may just end up loving it. It is hard, physical work though-for me that was the major downfall.

Have you considered a refresher course before going back into the work world? might shore up both your skills and your confidence.

Oasis is not typically required on pediatric patients.

Hi, Melissa, I've been in home care for ten years, first as a staff case manager in a nonprofit Medicare certified agency and now as a clinical specialist in a private pay for profit. You can feel free to contact me if you'd like. I never get tired of talking about home care!

I've been a nurse a long time now, and currently work as a gerontological care manager and part time nsg instructor at the local community college. In no other profession-not even medicine-do you have the diversity of choices that you do as a nurse. I hear people all the time in this forum and elsewhere b*tch about their units, the hours, etc. I don't have any sympathy for it. I hated acute care too, which is why I moved out of it as quick as I could, but I'm still a nurse.

I just wish we spent less time talking about doctors in these forums. Do you think they spend one tenth of the energy thinking about us as we do thinking about them?? They're coworkers and colleagues is all, just like the PTs and social workers. I have also found over the years that most of them, if you act professionally and know what you're talking about, are very respectful and easy to work with. Some fo them are real jerks but surprise, surprise, so are some of us.

Bingo. It is not doctors who abuse us. Most of them don't even think about us that much, or at least not nearly as much as we think about them. In 17 years of nursing-admittedly most of that in home care and now education-I can think of maybe two times I was spoken to disrespectfully by a physician, and one of them was just an arrogant bunghole that everyone hated. Usually it's the whining, *****y barbs from your peers that you have to put up with every day that wear you down, and was the prime reason I left acute care nursing-NOT the behavior of the physicians.

You know, I thought things were bad between the ICU and PACU nurses, or the med/surg units...but apparently they've got nothing on the OR staff. This type of petty behavior, folks, is why nursing is destined to be a second-tier profession, no matter what the job responsibilities are or how many degrees we have behind our names. Makes me sick to hear about this stuff.

I agree. I saw the first movie, actually, and hated it, only because the situations were so contrived. The entire nursing profession wasn't put down, but the stereotypes of male nurses being somehow unworthy was-as I recall, his future father-in-law asked him if he wouldn't please consider another profession and he said "no." It was nice to see him portrayed as comfortable with and enjoying his profession, but the fact remains that it was a pretty accurate portrayal of how men in nursing are perceived. In the second movie, it was much less of an issue, and I really enjoyed it. Barbra Streisand's character was having such a good time it made me consider becoming a sex therapist!!

Four years ago my family had to make a similar decision when it became clear my father was not going to recover from a protracted illness. We had made plans for everyone to be together in the am to "unplug" the vent, but he spared us following through on that decision and died during the night. Now, I have been a nurse for many years, both in ICU and hospice settings. I have seen dozens of people die. I know the drill. Yet, I didn't see it in my own father until a kind physician and nurse sat us down and helped us through it. I have never since made a judgment against a family struggling with this-even when to the "trained" eye, all seems lost-and am very quick to put in their place any self-righteous, know-it-all nurse (who may have only worked one shift with the patient) who does. I tell them my story and it shuts them up quick. There is nothing more personal than this, and the avenues people take to come to their decisions need to be respected.

I took the MAT after doing some practice tests and scored well. It just depends on which schools you're looking at what test you take, if any. I think they're a waste of time myself. My friend who also hadn't taken math for years took a prep course for the GRE and scored well within what she needed to to get into her program.

I agree. So much of what I read in these posts concerns someone's reactions to another's action-be it physician, manager, coworker, whatever-and what can I do to change that person's behavior. Well, you don't have the power to change another's behavior. All you can do is change your response to it. I'm old and it took me a long time to realize that, but since I let go of the responsibility to change everyone, and concentrated only on myself, it's been a lot easier.

Holy smoke!! I can't blame you for being disgusted by some of the practices of these instructors. I've been a med/surg instructor for 2 years now, and I ALWAYS have assignments ready the day before, have my students listen to report, and would never dream of embarrassing a staff nurse in front of a student!!! However, it seems too bad to take it out on the poor students, who are already stressed enough by a lousy educational experience. Perhaps a call to the school's program director is in order. I've done a lot of things over the course of a 20 year career, and I think we all should realize that being nasty or rude to inexperienced people, or to your coworkers in general, is not unique to nursing. I worked for a disability management company for two years and what went on there is terms of backbiting, gossip, and rudeness equalled or surpassed anything I've seen in a community of nurses, be in in the hospital or otherwise! We aren't alone in our bad behavior, unfortunately...

Your hospital by law has a Corporate Compliance hotline, and I would take advantage of it. You can make an anonymous report if you have to.

Quit, and soon. As a professional, I have certain standards for how I expect to be treated, and this episode for sure would have violated those in a big way. Get copies of your glowing evaluations and get your butt out of there.

I graduated from a BSN program in 1987, MS in 2002, and am in my second year as a clinical instructor in an ADN program. Nursing is not unlike many other educational programs where you learn the book and theory during school and your employer is expected to train you to their way of doing things after graduation. Why do you think most new grad orientations are 3-6 months long? Have you seen any new medical school graduate, beginning his or her internship in July, who is competent to take care of even a sprained ankle? No! It's completely, utterly impossible to teach students everything they need to know in two years (really 16 mos) of nursing school, and the technical procedures vary from unit to unit anyway. As an instructor, I want to know that you can safely perform an assessment before anything else, that you can prioritize actions based on that assessment, and that you are safely giving medications. Yes, we will hang IVs and give injections and all that other stuff; but that's not my biggest concern (although it may be my students). I think I inserted one foley in nursing school, but now, 17 years later, I've long ago lost track of the numbers of foleys and IVs and blah blah blah I've done over the years. Believe me, that stuff comes and comes quickly once you get employed!

You know what? I've been feeling kind of bummed out lately, too, especially since meeting an old friend from high school who is also a nurse and who now seemingly has the kind of job and life I could only dream about...I've been feeling bad about my life choices (and I've made some bad ones, folks), but then I got watching about the hurricane in Haiti. Fifteen hundred people dead, starvation and disease, dead animals everywhere...my life is a holiday. We're all very, very lucky to be in the positions we're in and have a lot to be proud of. (Besides, who knows, that perfect person's husband may be cheating on her, she may hate that perfect job, and may drink too much. Nothing, really, is ever as it seems, and all we can do is focus on ourselves!!!)