The Know-It-All nurse

Specialties Ob/Gyn

Published

Have any of you ever worked with a nurse who THINKS she knows it all but is truly very unskilled in her specialty? These are scary people!! Let's compare :crying2: :imbar :rotfl: notes!

this is very prevalent among new nurses...i guess that they believe that their training is more recent or that the other nurses will respect her for being a fountain of knowledge..this is not just in nursing...the old saying that a new seaman is the 'saltiest' man on the ship...sometimes it is their personality..i have known some who could really convince the management that they were the smartest, hardest working nurse on the floor....other nurses were not smiling

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I actually see it more with the old battlehorses. We have a couple nurses who probably haven't done any updating in their knowledge since they finished nursing school in the 1920s. Our new grads are all too terrified to even be able to pretend they know it all!:D

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

I was going to say! (thank you again Fergus)----

New nurses most often teach ME a thing or two. They are so "fresh" and so open, like sponges, awake and alert to everything. Most of the new nurses I work with are VERY eager to learn, and very good about asking when they don't know something. I am always excited to see new nurses out of school join us, knowing they will keep ME on my toes. See, they don't have jaundiced eyes when assessing patients and situations, like some of us "older" RN's.

Further, I have had new nurses save MY bacon once or twice, when I missed a subtle change in a newborn/mom right away. I find the "know it all " attitude much more common among those "old" nurses who feel they have seen it all.....

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Oh yes...One of them is a very good worker who just seems to want to tell us everything we do "wrong" or omit, never thinking that she also makes mistakes that the night nurses discover on checks....We just don't think a missed notation of orders, or forgetting to write the time of a PKU on a chart is as important as every thing she brings up. Finally, I took her aside and told her that while I did appreciate all the info, and looked to her for advice and felt I learned a lot, others and sometimes even I felt picked on and even if she hadn't meant it that way, we took it that way. She eased up on all of us after that and I feel it probably wasn't her intention to scold or be know it all as much as trying to teach....Had it continued though, I might have not ever figured that out. But, to answer your question, yes, I have worked with people who really thought they knew it all and screwed up all the time..Scary!

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Specializes in NICU.

We had a know-it-all nurse that just KNEW the doctor was going to start abx on this new NICU admit. So she wrote verbal orders in the chart to start abx and then asked another nurse and then another and then another to prepare and give the abx (she was the charge nurse that day). Every one of the nurses refused since abx weren't actually ordered yet. So she gave the abx herself and got herself fired.

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Have any of you ever worked with a nurse who THINKS she knows it all but is truly very unskilled in her specialty? These are scary people!! Let's compare :crying2: :imbar :rotfl: notes!

u know what i hate is a HHA that thinks she/he knows more than the nurse..

its like if u wanted to be a nurse --go to school and get your stripes--if not shut up--

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I work with an older nurse who will pick apart every single thing everyone else does..and yet when we are overflowing with patients (and not enough staff) and her patient is in the middle of a 4 minute contraction with a BP of 70/30 and baby responds with a nice prolonged decel...she'll be cleaning out the refrigerator in the breakroom!!

Another coworker is just a loose cannon. Breaking down the bed, pushing hard with the pt. for 2 hrs., even though the MD stood out at the nurses station and told her "Don't be too aggressive...I'll be in the OR until 3:30". Needless to say, the nurse delivered the baby herself with NO ONE ELSE IN THE ROOM at 3:25. She didn't call for help until the baby was all the way out. Pt. had epidural and stated afterward that she really had no urge to push. She could have labored her down for awhile. And our policy is not to break down the bed until MD is in the room and ready to deliver.

I have a lot more examples but I'd be here all day :uhoh3:

Isn't it aginst the law for a nurse to deliver a baby by herself?

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u know what i hate is a HHA that thinks she/he knows more than the nurse..

its like if u wanted to be a nurse --go to school and get your stripes--if not shut up--

That's what is called " RN-itis! :rotfl:

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Isn't it aginst the law for a nurse to deliver a baby by herself?

Of course it is NOT against the law to deliver a baby! It would be far worse to NOT assist with the birth if there is no doc there! We L&D nurses have that happen on occasion (some places more than others). WE cannot always predict when the baby will decide to make its appearance.LOL!

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It is NOT against the law for a nurse to deliver a baby (consider the nurse midwives). The rest of us don't do it routinely but people do show up pushing on the unit or even ten feet from the call room and the nurse who is there will do it...In some hospitals I have been in they consider that an incident report...There are some instances when it just can't be helped. Ideally, we and everyone else prefer the doc do it, but they don't have the lightening speed required in some cases....

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If your nurse cleaning the fridge is anything like a similar nurse we have, she crabs and fusses no matter what her assignment: charge, labor, nursery (God forbid) or mothers.

Gee, I wonder who that could be Betsy!!!

I am not sure that the loose cannon example is really that she doesn't think outside the box. More that she likes to be in the center of things that she thinks she can handle but really has no clue of the trouble she can get herself into. We have one of those here and unfortunately she recently oriented a new, just out of school RN who is a great nurse already but needs to be "re-oriented" to reality!!

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It's sad that someone would think that way. However, I think that is due to many things: 1)the specific person's personality and 2) some of the programs that encourage these new nurses to think that they do NOT need to know how to do hands-on things. I think we do our new grads a disservice encouraging them to think that they will go directly into management and don't need to know how to do bedside nursing.

I think your right BETSRN. Personality and some of the programs. We were talking about that at work the other day.

As far as working with new grads...sometimes they are my favorite to work with because they are so willing to learn or they are my least favorite because they act as if they came to show me how to do things.

Heck I've been a nurse for 8 years and I still look up to the nurses more senior then me. We have some nurses that have been at my facility for 25 to 30 years........a wealth of knowledge.

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