The pain under the charge nurses who lack of good leadership skill..

[natashakin]

I was currently undergoing to gain the experience to be in charge in ICU with a Charge Nurse A. This is part of the training as senior staff nurse. This is my third days but I still hanging around. I have no learning objectives, she is just ignoring me most of the time and complains about me that I am "hanging around". I am quite stressed up because I have no idea what I should behave. But I still do my best what I know a charge should do. I hope there is a structure that I can learn. There are ten patients, one for sternal closure, one for cardiac cath, one for CT scan and bedside insertion of chest drains tube, 2 for ECHO, 3 for extubations, one for reintubation, one arrested in just a shift. Demanding doctors, incessant phone calls, people here in and out.

While she left me, a doctor asked me to call the ENT surgeon. I looked up in the book, there are so thick and I didnt see ENT listed in the content. Therefore I asked another charge nurse B who was present, she flipped the book so hard, and barked at me to look up by myself in front of the doctor. While I was flipping the book, my nonchalant preceptor CN A came back. She, with more experience, told me the numbers to call. I was so hurt and stunned, and I didnt know what she meant. Both of them ridiculed me at the same times while I was standing there didnt know what to do. I felt like I was once again in the worse learning environment again. As I left the counter, my tears were streaming down my face. I was so hurt and angry.

Apparently the charge nurse B didn't know that the ENT surgeon number was not in the phone book. She just pretended she know and tried to make me look like a fool. Working in such acuity area, it is not about being independant finding your own way out, it is about assissting each another to work as a team. I have worked there for more than two years. She could have just tell me she was not sure that the number was there and asked me to look up by myself. She didnt have to be rude and bark at me as if I was a fool.

"I respect charge nurse who admit their own shortcoming rather than trying to pretend they know everything."

Charge nurse A, who disliked charge nurse B, came to drag me to the office, and trying to hug me to her bossom. She wanted to find out why I was crying, maybe because she was frightened that she was the reason. She was part of it, causing me to have such stress level, it was just that charge nurse B burst it. But I didnt tell her that, because she was still a good person in nature, just a bit "political".

I urge all the nurses to learn about teamwork and leadership skill in depth with the BEST EVIDENCE BASED. I recommended transformational leadership skill which have high reliability.I urge all the nurses to learn the teaching and facilitating skill, so that they know how to guide a trainee..

Before all of these, I know I am still in the swirlpool of emotional stress caused by the nursing operational team leaders or team workers.

God help us, the nursing force. Above all, it is patient care!