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!

Specializes in Nursing assistant.
I tend to believe that all the bluster comes from fear. So, I just come right out and say how much respect seasoned nurses have for new nurses that ask a lot of questions and new nurses who do not are watched very closley. If said with a welcome smile and early in their employment it tends to work more times then not.........

Thanks for that! I have worked as a CNA for ten years and am going to LPN school this fall. I am scared to death of some nurses, and my greatest fear when I start a job is not being able to ask questions. School and training are great, but I know enough to know that when I get out there, that is when the real learning will begin!

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I think the know-it-all mentality is a scary, scary thing. I find that a lot of nit pickers out there focus on small details because they do not have the capacity to think critically or deal with complex work situations. It is easy to snark about messy handwriting or not checking the glucometer machine to make yourself look good, isn't it?

It almost seems as though these offending nurses are battling with their own incompetence and, as a means of not being "found out," they attack others. Classic bully playground tactics really. Ya know - make fun of others before somebody can make fun of you!

Yet I find these same nurses often miss the REAL issues like a patient with a developing PE or compartment syndrome.

And for the record, these wiley nurses come in all shapes and sizes, all ages.

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I think the know-it-all mentality is a scary, scary thing. I find that a lot of nit pickers out there focus on small details because they do not have the capacity to think critically or deal with complex work situations. It is easy to snark about messy handwriting or not checking the glucometer machine to make yourself look good, isn't it?

It almost seems as though these offending nurses are battling with their own incompetence and, as a means of not being "found out," they attack others. Classic bully playground tactics really. Ya know - make fun of others before somebody can make fun of you!

Yet I find these same nurses often miss the REAL issues like a patient with a developing PE or compartment syndrome.

And for the record, these wiley nurses come in all shapes and sizes, all ages.

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Don't care what letters follow your name, or how many titles you have...you don't know it ALL..lol..I gotta agree with you all that it's the 'knowitall" nurse that's scary to me...no matter how old or new you are, there are always new things to be learned. Give me the nurse who says I'm not sure, or I don't know,but will find out anyday. I've worked with so many different personalities in nursing. We all have to accept the fact that we are not 'all knowing'..the nurses who have that knowitallness (what a word huh? lol) end up hanging themselves and sometimes their pts sad to say..work together, help each other, and share useful information...what a concept....just thought of a for instance: CNA comes to nurse perfect and tells her something is not right with pt X and explains what she sees..nurse ignores CNA and doesn't even go assess pt..hour later pt is in severe resp distress..code called..pt dies...could it have been prevented? maybe/maybe not..we'll never know because at the first s/s no action was taken...listening to each other is so important..don't ever get so allknowing that you forget to listen :)

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Don't care what letters follow your name, or how many titles you have...you don't know it ALL..lol..I gotta agree with you all that it's the 'knowitall" nurse that's scary to me...no matter how old or new you are, there are always new things to be learned. Give me the nurse who says I'm not sure, or I don't know,but will find out anyday. I've worked with so many different personalities in nursing. We all have to accept the fact that we are not 'all knowing'..the nurses who have that knowitallness (what a word huh? lol) end up hanging themselves and sometimes their pts sad to say..work together, help each other, and share useful information...what a concept....just thought of a for instance: CNA comes to nurse perfect and tells her something is not right with pt X and explains what she sees..nurse ignores CNA and doesn't even go assess pt..hour later pt is in severe resp distress..code called..pt dies...could it have been prevented? maybe/maybe not..we'll never know because at the first s/s no action was taken...listening to each other is so important..don't ever get so allknowing that you forget to listen :)

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LOL.....that may be true, but.......can you imagine? Not enough money in the world for me to be a nurse manage

I wouldn't be a manager either. It's too bad that the pre-requisite for ANY management position should be several years at the bedside.

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LOL.....that may be true, but.......can you imagine? Not enough money in the world for me to be a nurse manage

I wouldn't be a manager either. It's too bad that the pre-requisite for ANY management position should be several years at the bedside.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

We have a nurse in our unit who believes that she should only ever care for the sickest patient in the unit. She's in her late 20's and feels that her "experience and skills" are wasted on anyone who isn't in extremis. She will come in early to check out her assignment and if it's a child with any kind of chronicity, she will then approach the duty manager to have her assignment changed. She has been heard telling the manager that caring for children with developmental and neurological impairments is beneath her. (As the parent of one of these special people, I'm just waiting for her to say something like that in my presence. Her life will never be the same.) She also keeps track of people who were hired around the same time she was and what kinds of assignments they are given. When she has been assigned to the sick kid, when the inevitable fertilizer hits the ventilator, she stands at the foot of the bed while everyone else does the saving. People are so sick of her behaviour and so reluctant to work with her that when her patient's alarms go off, nobody even looks up to see what's happening. It's a disaster in the making and I pray I'm not there when it really goes bad!

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

I recently worked with a nurse from Canada who was a real snot. I have worked with many foreign nurses and I do not want to be accused of generalizing here. But this one was a real pain in the butt. She had been out of school a whopping year and a half doing ortho before she graced us all with her presence on the oncology unit at my hospital. She took the chemo cert course which I had found quite difficult even though I have been a nurse for 24 years. I asked her how it went and she told me that it was "all basic nursing"! I told her I had found it harder than the ACLS course. Everything was always, "in Canada this, in Canada that...". One morning I really lost it with her. She was complaining about the plum pumps we use at our hospital which I happen to think are pretty nice. She said she liked the ones in, you guessed it, CANADA, because you could take them off the pump and run the IV on gravity. I told her I was familiar with those, the old IVAC pumps which were not really pumps at all, just drip counters, but that I hadn't seen one in use in years and assumed that they had all been put in museums where they belonged! On second thought maybe the US sold them to Canadian hospitals for use on the few lucky patients who manage to get admitted before their conditions become fatal. :angryfire

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I worked with a nurse who ALMOST gave atropine instead of ativan, Scary! luckily her preceptor caught her before she gave it

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.
One morning I really lost it with her. She was complaining about the plum pumps we use at our hospital which I happen to think are pretty nice. She said she liked the ones in, you guessed it, CANADA, because you could take them off the pump and run the IV on gravity. I told her I was familiar with those, the old IVAC pumps which were not really pumps at all, just drip counters, but that I hadn't seen one in use in years and assumed that they had all been put in museums where they belonged! On second thought maybe the US sold them to Canadian hospitals for use on the few lucky patients who manage to get admitted before their conditions become fatal. :angryfire

The Baxter Colleague volumetric infusion pumps have tubing that can be taken out of the pump and run by gravity. See the link below. (Baxter is a US manufacturer.) These pumps are very easy to use, accurate and take up very little space at the bedside. I prefer them the the Alaris volumetric pumps, that obviously were not designed by anyone who would have to use them in real life.

http://www.baxter.com/products/medication_management/infusion_pumps/large_volume_infusion_pumps/colleague/index.html

Please do not dump on Canada because of one experience with a Canadian. And please don't suggest that our health care is any less professional or cutting edge because of one encounter. I work in a state-of-the-art quaternary care facility that has some of lowest morbidity and mortality rates on the continent.

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We have a nurse in our unit who believes that she should only ever care for the sickest patient in the unit. She's in her late 20's and feels that her "experience and skills" are wasted on anyone who isn't in extremis. She will come in early to check out her assignment and if it's a child with any kind of chronicity, she will then approach the duty manager to have her assignment changed. She has been heard telling the manager that caring for children with developmental and neurological impairments is beneath her. (As the parent of one of these special people, I'm just waiting for her to say something like that in my presence. Her life will never be the same.) She also keeps track of people who were hired around the same time she was and what kinds of assignments they are given. When she has been assigned to the sick kid, when the inevitable fertilizer hits the ventilator, she stands at the foot of the bed while everyone else does the saving. People are so sick of her behaviour and so reluctant to work with her that when her patient's alarms go off, nobody even looks up to see what's happening. It's a disaster in the making and I pray I'm not there when it really goes bad!

That young lady needs an attitude adjustment bigtime, as do all know it all nurses, IMO.

I don't know how she has avoided one, for so long.

If she worked under my DON, an adjustment wouldn't be long in coming.

I work in MR/DDS, and I love it, so keep her away from me.

:angryfire

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