island2016

Plantsower, thank you :) I was actually remarking that I wanted to work in Surg to observe nurses b/c another person posted that is a good place to learn valuable nursing skills that could help me out in my career :) I agree that prior experience in health care will be helpful. I was fortunate enough to get a job in healthcare a couple of years ago and to work with a lot of great people and I was able to master a lot of medical terminology but saw very little direct patient care. I think observing experienced nurses providing care would be really helpful.

Shagce 1, thank you for your tactful response. I agree with you 100% when you say that leadership is a critical component. I am pursuing nursing as my second career and I definitely experienced the benefits or consequences of good or poor leadership in my previous professional positions. It also seems like in some professions certain specialties can attract certain personality types and so I wondered if that was the same case in nursing. Thanks again :)

Wow thanks for the advice and for your honesty :) I was actually looking into entry level Med Surg jobs, like an OR tech assistant, so that I could observe the nurses.

Please let me know if you think there are any areas of nursing that I could consider going into that do NOT typically have a culture of bullying and hazing. Bottom line I do not want to work in a hostile environment. I am tough and a hard working person but I do not want to be unhappy or put patients, or myself, at risk. I am a pre-nursing student. I have read some articles citing that nurses really do eat their young and that the behavior is so prevalent about 60 percent of nurses quit because of being bullied and that patients are often put at risk when other nurses ignore another nurses calls or when important information and training is withheld from other nurses holding grudges, etc. To make matters worse it seems that most nurses I meet seem unhappy and they have warned me that nurses treat one another very poorly. This was a surprise since nursing is such a kind a noble profession. I have completed all of my nursing pre-req courses and have started to apply to nursing schools but after reading about the workplace culture I am strongly considering a different career. Does anyone know of nursing options that do NOT typically have this kind of work climate? I already have a Bachelors degree in another field and nursing would be my second career so it is really important to me to avoid any options that might lead me into a hostile work environment where I cannot properly care for patients or where I am just miserable because of coworkers. It may be that nursing just is not for me but if you have any suggestions on areas of nursing with less nurse on nurse conflict please let me know. I should note that I have worked with extremely hostile and sometimes dangerous clients, as well as their families, in my previous career, so I am more than equipped to deal with challenging patients and and their loved ones. When I transitioned to health care support I managed angry patients and worked well with them. My concern is about what I have heard regarding the hostility that seems to occur between nurses and how it could impact my job performance. Thank you for any suggestions you may have regarding areas of nursing that might be better suited for someone that wants to avoid conflict with coworkers.