Psych nurses over 60

Specialties Psychiatric

Published

I have worked in psych for four years now as an RN, did other fields before. But I have noticed that the nurses that are over 60 want to have preferential treatment when it comes to assignments. Do you think that is fair? Some become angry and openly hostile in our 100 bed hospital when they cannot get their preferences and it is allowed. What do you think of this picture? We are talking about 15% of a workforce on all levels.

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They do not even want to pass meds, only sit and talk and not to patients....

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No. That doesn't sound fair. If they don't want to do meds then they should at least go out and talk to the patients. I use to be assigned meds everyday. I was told that they wanted me to do meds because I did a good job when I did meds.When I worked psych many many years ago I talked to the boss because I was always the one doing meds. I said I didn't want to do meds everyday and would like everyone to take turns doing the meds. He said OK, and then everyone had to take turns. Everyone young and old had to take turns doing meds and yes everyone was mad and complaining about it all the time. But eventually it worked out and everyone adjusted to it.

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That is the assignment that they do not want to do, medications. How did you guess? Many of these nurses either transfer to the unit from medical hospitals in our system or come from other facilities because they think that psych is a walk in the park. The particular unit that I work on is 40 bed and half of the unit is geriatric patients. The Geri have multiple chronic illnesses in addition to their psych disorders. So of course it also adds to the medications that are distributed to them. They must be crushed for some and it takes more time to do the med pass. The evening pass usually takes three hours while the AP side takes 20 minutes. Guess which side everyone always gravitates to? After the 20 minute med pass people disappear and socialize with friends. It is quite easy to do when you are in the charge nurse's clique. There is no supervisor only a charge nurse, so this is the story of this place. Finally out of frustration a new nurse was brave enough to complain, now the war is on. Seniors and those with seniority do not want change. But the senior is making the most of the change. Bullying some and being openly hostile to others. You would think that someone of that age would be the most humble....but even the director is a senior and she is of limited help because she is similar to them, she does not like being bothered either... many times we have to go over her head and seek help from human resources.

It is a struggle, but not hopeless to work there.

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I don't think anyone of any age or level of seniority should be exempt from doing any job on a unit and that no one should be stuck doing a difficult or unpleasant task all of the time. However, I'm not sure what you mean by your statement that nurses over 60 should be the most "humble." I hope it is just the misuse or misunderstanding of the meaning of the word because I certainly can't see any reason why older nurses should be more humble than anyone else.

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I've worked in psych for 25 years now, and I've encountered plenty of young nurses who behave the same way. I don't think it's a matter of age so much. A lot of people come to psych nursing because they are looking for something "easier" than medical-surgical nursing (we get plenty of threads about that here).

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However, I'm not sure what you mean by your statement that nurses over 60 should be the most "humble." I hope it is just the misuse or misunderstanding of the meaning of the word because I certainly can't see any reason why older nurses should be more humble than anyone else.

Ditto ...

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These responses must be from the over 60 group. You looked too deep into the word "humble". I do not think that anyone just because they are older than another person should feel that they have the right to be intimidating to someone that they are working with purely because they have more knowledge. I will give you an example. You are assigned to pass medications for the shift and you are given another assignment that takes you away from that area for one hour. You return and the med room looks a little messy. The person subjected to the comment, the youngest nurse, was not in the area accused because of earlier interaction with the person. In turn you go to the nurse and scream at them, "HAVE YOU BEEN IN THAT MED ROOM?". One of the definitions of humble according to Webster is "not arrogant", this is the definition that I am referring to. I am aware that younger nurses can also be this way. but at this particular facility the only ones I have come into contact with that are behaving that way are the older crowd and it is a limited number, but it is present.

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I'm not over 60, I just object to people being lumped together and vilified with reference to age, race, gender, sexual preference, socioeconomic background....

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These responses must be from the over 60 group.

Nope, not me, but nice try ...

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Specializes in Psych.
These responses must be from the over 60 group. You looked too deep into the word "humble". I do not think that anyone just because they are older than another person should feel that they have the right to be intimidating to someone that they are working with purely because they have more knowledge. I will give you an example. You are assigned to pass medications for the shift and you are given another assignment that takes you away from that area for one hour. You return and the med room looks a little messy. The person subjected to the comment, the youngest nurse, was not in the area accused because of earlier interaction with the person. In turn you go to the nurse and scream at them, "HAVE YOU BEEN IN THAT MED ROOM?". One of the definitions of humble according to Webster is "not arrogant", this is the definition that I am referring to. I am aware that younger nurses can also be this way. but at this particular facility the only ones I have come into contact with that are behaving that way are the older crowd and it is a limited number, but it is present.

Your "these responses must be from the over 60 group" comment comes across as rather snide to me, not to mention ageist.

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One thing I noticed about this forum, a word will be picked out of a thread that someone does not like or agree with and the main idea of the thread is lost. The remaining comments will all be fixated on the word or thought taken out of content and the responses after that will over and over only respond to the negative and forget all about the idea.

I guess the original forum of nurses over 60 is lost to "humble".

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