Time to don the fireproof underwear. It is 0500 and the reality alarm clock is ringing, and some people do not like to hear it go off. So whether you agree with me or not, I feel it is time to inject a little thought provoking ideas into your life.
I am sure I am about to get flamed for posting this, but I feel the need to anyways. I have been seeing these threads talking about bullying and teachers or preceptors hating the students, and new nurses or abusing them because of some perceived slight or injustice. Well guess what?
The world is a hard cold nasty place that does not need to be polite to you or worry whether your feelings got hurt and you feel offended. You need to grow up and realize that the abuse that you claim is rampant, or the bullying that you experience all the time is not their problem, but rather your problem.
I see so many posts about this and I wonder how some of these people have survived as long as they have. School is tough? Deal with it. You think that someone else is getting it easier? Well too bad, they may be but no one ever promised you everything would be fair. You have to learn that there is inequality in life. It's how you overcome that inequality that matters. It teaches perseverance.
Abusive teachers? Maybe they are trying to get the best in you to come out. What you think is abuse maybe is pushing you to your limits, to get you further along in your potential. So your feelings got hurt at school, grow up, feelings get hurt every day.
Your preceptor is unorganized and does not like you and bad mouths you to your manager, and all your patients love you but no one at the hospital sees how great you really are?
Well your preceptor may actually have great time management skill, but when having to slow down and teach someone their job, things do tend to get disorganized. You may be part of the blame there.
Did you ever stop to think that you are the proverbial monkey wrench in a well oiled machine? The need to teach you, and I realize you do need to learn, can be very time consuming. They may tell your manager that you need improving or that you are not advancing fast enough. They may be all smiles to you, because they want to support you and keep you positive, but they need to tell the manager how you really are.
Speaking of orientation, how often have I seen statements that say the other nurses are not supportive and will not answer questions. Have you ever thought that maybe you are asking TOO MANY questions?
After a bit it may seem that you are not retaining the info provided and everyone gets tired of answering the same questions over and over. Part of learning is knowing when to shut your mouth and just watch. It has been said by people wiser than me that the only question you should ask is the question that you already know the answer to. If that does not make sense to you, think about it for a while and you might just be surprised that a light comes on.
So basically what i am saying is grow up and act like the adult that you are. Life is not fair, school is not fair, work is not fair. You just have to learn to deal with it.
This discussion makes me feel like I picked the wrong major, but I'm just going to deal with it because I do not have other reasonable options at this point.
What inspired you to write that? I would bet you're not a parent.
Here's my perspective. I came to nursing as a second career. Formerly I was an attorney (I still have my license and am looking at ways to dust it off some day, but that's another story).
I was used to an office environment full of suits and, I came to realize, a level of professional respect. Nursing was not the same at all. Have you heard the expression "nurses eat their young"? It's real. Google it. Horizontal violence. Yes, that's another term. Compared to my professional lawyerly workplace where people could have a (relatively) calm, professional disagreement, nursing exemplifies sarcastic, blaming, backstabbing, passive aggressive behaviors at a level I had not experienced since the playground. These things are real. To just tell people to "grow up" seems pretty dismissive and certainly not very helpful.
You're technically correct that it's unreasonable for new nurses, exposed to the slings and arrows of nursing, to expect that other nurses, in general, should be nicer to them, or whatever. But, if someone has a problem with how another individual colleague they work with regularly is treating them, they should consider talking to that person to see if they can build a better relationship. When nurses have conflicts with other nurses, they talk about it with their buddies, tattle to management...they seem to talk to everyone EXCEPT the nurse they conflict with. I hope management at your facility does what they can to stamp out this counterproductive behavior. Nurses, especially ones who work together regularly, should work out their differences. As a lawyer, I don't have a problem approaching nurses who rarely irk me enough to justify it. Most of the time it works out well. For example, I report off to a nurse who is very energetic and interrupts a lot to jump ahead to ask questions about later items in my SBAR, which annoys me. She also can be a little oblivious of my time crunch (ie I'm trying to report off so I can clock out). During report she's going and messing with the pump to check and see when she needs to hang her next bag, writing her name on the white
board, etc. These tasks are distracting and can be done after we finish report. I think report should be devoted to introducing the new nurse, doing a thorough bedside report, a quick safety check of IVs, O2, etc. and that's it. Remember I need to do more reports and get out of here, yeah? I felt myself on more than one occasion getting irritated. Long story short: I talked to her about these things and it was a terrific, calm, discussion. She listened and has made a concerted effort to work on these things. Our working relationship improved. about it. My point is, although nursing is a tough kitchen to cook in, and although people need to be able to stand the heat, they also need to be empowered to stand up for themselves and demand some respect in appropriate instances.
Telling people they should just grow up and quit whining is not particularly helpful. What new nurses need to be is MENTORED. They need to be taught how to get their act together to avoid ******* off senior nurses. They need to be listened to. If they feel that people are bullying them, listen to them! Ultimately it's going to be their choice: either you're going to have to crank up your courage and find the right moment to go talk to this person directly, get help from your ANM (who hopefully will just say "you need to talk amongst yourselves), or just accept this behavior and let it roll off your back, try not to take it personally, etc.
I have a new nurse on my shift who I could see was struggling last night because she had that deer in the headlights look a few times. I had a slow night going, so I asked her repeatedly whether I could help. She thanked me, but said no. Then, about 10 min prior to the start of report, she said "well, you could draw a nurse collect for me." She knew about this HOURS ago. Did she **** me off? Yes. She said she just "forgot" to tell me earlier, which I can believe as a new nurse she genuinely did. What am I going to do about it? Well, first I went and drew her labs right quick. When I see her again tonight, I'm going to MENTOR her. I'm going to explain that because she does not want to forget stuff like this, she needs to use tools, such as a timeline for night shift, to help her stay organized. She needs to also not be shy about asking people to help her if she's overwhelmed, but do so in a way that is respectful of others' time. In short, I'm going to help her become a better nurse. As experienced nurses, this is what we all should do. That said, if you have a new nurse who is not progressing, they need to be taken under someone's wing. The behavior that needs to change needs to be identified (calmly and professionally and probably by a manager) so that it can be corrected. If the nurse still doesn't progress, maybe it's time to start helping them out the door.
Am I being clear here? Telling people to essentially grow up, quit whining, nursing is a gloves off job, just dismisses their legitimate frustration. Remember: nursing may be gloves off, but it is often that way because it's flipping dysfunctional! There IS horizontal violence, nurses DO eat their young. New nurses need to be empowered to stand up for themselves (in carefully chosen cases that justify it) and respectfully ask their colleagues to work on themselves, not just to suck it up.
Think about how many new grads get less than 12 weeks of orientation, sometimes much less. In my nursing jobs, orientation has ranged from 4 hours to 2 weeks.
New grads of yesteryear were able to hit the floor running from day 1 because they had much more clinical time. Back when hospitals ran nursing programs, students were the evening shift. They spent more time on the floor in 1 term than many current grads spend in 2 years. They also didn't face nearly as many restrictions on what they were allowed to do as a student. At one classmate's complex med-surg clinical, students were only allowed to give oral meds. Can you really blame current new grads for feeling unprepared and asking lots of questions?
This is the crux of it. I made several comments about this in response to the "Do new graduate nurses need a formal residency program?" article. Nursing school today doesn't prepare you to be a nurse, it prepares you to pass the NCLEX. Most new grads are clueless when they start their first job (I was one of them a few years ago) because they don't have the clinical experience that older nurse got in school. You don't get much hands-on practical experience in most programs these days, it's almost all theory.
And many nurses are very condescending and passive-aggressive. Here's a good example: I work in a nursing home. One time a CNA gave his vitals sheet to a nurse and it had a temp for someone of 97.5 but the way he wrote the 7 it looked like a 2. So the nurse went to the CNA and started questioning him in a very snarky tone "What's a normal temperature?", "Don't you think there's something wrong if you get a temp of 92.5?" and so on until he finally realized she misread the number. She could have just said "Hey, is this temp really 92.5?" And I've seen plenty of instances of nurses talking to people like this. Rather than approaching things from the standpoint of "what happened here?" it's "you screwed up you idiot."
I hope the OP treats his or her patients better than he or she treats students and/or preceptees. What does treating people like garbage really accomplish? Does it make you feel good about yourself? We all know the world is a tough place to live but treating and talking to people like trash is no way to go through life. I'm sorry if someone asking you questions offends you. Perhaps you'd rather have mistakes made and malpractice suits filed? Coming across OPs like this and other nurses with the same attitude made me realize what type of nurse I wouldn't want to be. If the nursing experience bothers you so much and that means dealing with, egads students and preceptees, then you should perhaps find another line of work. We were all students once. We all didn't wake up one day and automatically become experienced nurses. Just because you might've been treated horribly as a student, doesn't mean you have to perpetuate the nonsense.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Wow! I agree life isn't easy and no one should be spoon fed but there is no need to treat each other this way unless we need to boost our own ego with some power trip by putting others down and being mean! I've been a nurse for a very long time and honestly this is one of the reasons I don't want my daughters to be nurses! There is NO need to be rude or mean which unfortunately many feel they have the right too or justify it by saying they're having a bad day?? WE can be OUR professions own worst enemies by the way we treat each other! We are responsible for the lives of patients in our care which causes a lot of stress, especially to new grads, not to mention the risk of a lawsuit with each room we walk in to! I really hope we continue to get more men in this field because for the most part, unless very insecure, they treat each other better than women treat each other and are much less likely to gossip, point fingers, and be overtly cruel. Doctors look out for each other, hospitals look out for themselves and their doctors when a mistake is made but nurses are an easy scape goat for both of them! Nurses don't look out for each other, WHY? It's much easier to point the finger, probably middle, at each other instead of fostering and nurturing our own! I feel a lot of this poor treatment comes from being understaffed, overworked, and Administration not wanting us to be united . Preceptors should be assigned fewer patients if they chose to precept a new grad or a new hire. If your going to treat fellow nurses this way how do you treat your patients that may ask questions, or too many, not sure what your limit is?? Do our profession a favor and treat each other compassion, understanding, and respect! No one is perfect and new grads and new hires are insecure and at our mercy. There is no way you got to where you are in nursing without other nurses taking their precious time to teach you.
Despite your many years in nursing, you don't seem to get it. I don't see nearly as much rudeness and meanness in nursing as I see newbies complaining that someone has been rude or mean to them. In fact, the dichotomy is so great that I suspect the newbies either have no idea what rudeness or meanness looks like, never having encountered it before, or choose to blame all of their problems on someone else who has been rude or mean to them.
The part about needing more men in nursing because they treat each other better, are less likely to gossip, point fingers or be overtly cruel? Shame on you! You're both a sexist and a misogynist. Men are just as likely to gossip, point fingers or be overtly cruel . . . in fact in my experience they can gossip circles around most women. (My husband tells me the same thing -- he and his coworkers are the source of most of MY gossip!)
I'm sorry you've had such bad experiences with your coworkers. I have not had such horrible experiences in my 38 years. I'm wondering, perhaps, if it's something you're doing wrong.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I’m sure this battle of new nurses vs. experienced nurses has been going on since the beginning of nursing. As a newer nurse myself who is coming into this as a second profession I’ve worked in many fields prior to this and sadly I think there’s way more bullying/tattle tailing in nursing than any other profession I’ve been exposed to. It seems like a lot of girls that were the mean cheerleaders you see portrayed in movies grow up to be nurses. Hate to say it because there are plenty of great ones too.
Thirty eight years ago, when I started nursing, we newbies respected the experienced nurses, looked up to them and aspired to be just like them. The experienced nurses who took time to show us stuff were thanked copiously and we never, ever disrespected them. Consequently, they looked out for us. Things are so much different now.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
I hope the OP treats his or her patients better than he or she treats students and/or preceptees. What does treating people like garbage really accomplish? Does it make you feel good about yourself? We all know the world is a tough place to live but treating and talking to people like trash is no way to go through life. I'm sorry if someone asking you questions offends you. Perhaps you'd rather have mistakes made and malpractice suits filed? Coming across OPs like this and other nurses with the same attitude made me realize what type of nurse I wouldn't want to be. If the nursing experience bothers you so much and that means dealing with, egads students and preceptees, then you should perhaps find another line of work. We were all students once. We all didn't wake up one day and automatically become experienced nurses. Just because you might've been treated horribly as a student, doesn't mean you have to perpetuate the nonsense.
Where is your evidence that the OP treats anyone badly?
Where is your evidence that the OP treats anyone badly?
Seeing as the OP typed up a long "students and preceptees are a pain and need to suck it up" article, perhaps that's where I got the idea. So I guess the OP just happens to have these feelings all bottled up and is just venting here but in reality treats students and preceptees well and is supportive. Ok my bad.
I imagine there are times and places where the OP is on target, and other times and places where that is not the case.
I just wish to make the general point that it is probably a good idea for everyone writing posts on anything to make the title of the post reflect what the subject of the post is, not what you expect (or hope or fear) the reaction to your topic will be.
Bullying is not the bully's problem but the victims? Wow.
There is a difference between victim blaming and honesty.
This reminds me of a letter that circulates from time to time: Judge Philip Gilliam was published in the Denver newspaper in 1959 giving advice to teenagers at the time. It could easily apply to adults today
Open letter to Teen-agerAlways we hear the plaintive cry of the teen-ager. What can we do?...Were can we go?
The answer is GO HOME!
Hang the storm windows, paint the woodwork. Rake the leaves, mow the lawn, shovel the walk. Wash the car, learn to cook, scrub some floors. Repair the sink, build a boat, get a job.
Help the minister, priest, or rabbi, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army. Visit the sick, assist the poor, study your lessons. And then when you are through - and not too tired - read a book.
Your parents do not owe you entertainment. Your city or village does not owe you recreational facilities.
The world does not owe you a living...You owe the world something.
You owe it your time and your energy and your talents so that no one will be at war or in poverty or sick or lonely again.
Grow up; quit being a crybaby. Get out of your dream world and develop a backbone, not a wishbone, and start acting like a man or a lady.
You're supposed to be mature enough to accept some of the responsibility your parents have carried for years.
They have nursed, protected, helped, appealed, begged, excused, tolerated and denied themselves needed comforts so that you could have every benefit. This they have done gladly, for you are their dearest treasure.
But now, you have no right to expect them to bow to every whim and fancy just because selfish ego instead of common sense dominates your personality, thinking and request.
I get it! I've never known another profession that doesn't support one another to the extreme as mentioned in the post we are all commenting on. You categorizing newbies, lumping them all together as whiners. Your immediate judgment of these very excited new grads who can't wait to change the world and make a difference in someone's life is very sad. It wouldn't surprise me if they were complaining about you! If your offended by my comments too bad it's the truth! I'm possibly old enough to be a member of the crusty old bat society but if you represent what it's about no thanks!
nandosport
94 Posts
This discussion makes me feel like I picked the wrong major, but I'm just going to deal with it because I do not have other reasonable options at this point.