I've been working on this floor for about two months (I am a new grad). There is so much back stabbing and back biting I feel like I am working in a common cesspool. The nurses take turns talking about other nurses that are not around. They certainly talk about me. I've been told this by another nurse, I'll call her Nurse Debbie (not her real name). I pulled Nurse Debbie aside one night and told her I am not paranoid, but I just feel like the other nurses are talking about me. Nurse Debbie told me in so many words that they are talking about me, and she said I quote "they are going to tear her apart", this is what some other nurses said about me. I am already nervous about my job and I am depressed and stressed the days before I have to go to work. I like taking care of the patients for the most part, but feel so nervous and stressed because I know that the other nurses want to see me fail, excluding a couple of the nurses I work with. There have been a couple of other nurses that have come on since I have, and they have taken them right in. I guess I don't fit a certain description, the right looks, or whatever, I am not sure why they chose to exclude me. They give the other nurses compliments on their work, etc. BTW this unit has a hard time keeping nurses, because of how mean they are. There has been at least one nurse to have quit after I started. There aren't many jobs besides med-surg and I don't want to do that either. What should I do, how do I deal with this?
Here is a lesson I learned early on as a nurse aide in a similar toxic workplace-
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
If you hear other nurses badmouthing someone, go out of earshot because you don't need to be sitting there listening to it. If you ever have the urge to badmouth someone, keep it to yourself and bite your tongue. If you hear people talking about someone, don't mention it to the person that is being badmouthed/gossiped about - Nothing good will come of it.
You will avoid a LOT of problems that way.
I had a nurse that doesn't work very often ask me the other day, "Why is the deal with Coworker X? Everyone is always talking smack about her." I halfjokingly said, "it is my official policy to not discuss that kind of stuff!!" I left it at that.
People respect that.
Just stay above it, and don't worry too much about what your coworkers think. If it truely hurts your feelings, be cordial and professional in your dealings with them but leave it at that. You are the better person!
And don't underestimate people's motives either! I used to work with a nurse who would purposely and untruthfully tell people that other people were talking about them. Just because she was a huge jerk. She'd blow stuff out of proportion. If I said, "Sue must be tired today, because she's going slow" that nurse would go to Sue and say, "Hey November551 was just saying that you are lazy and shove all your work on the other aides." It really didn't make any sense why she was like that. That's just what she did, day in and day out. Eventually everyone more or less learned to ignore her but at first it caused a lot of problems. Obviously I probably should have just kept my mouth shut in the first place, but it was all part of the learning experience.
Specializes in inpatient rehab (general, sci, tbi, cva).
I agree with november and cweeks. I do also believe that work environments with a lot of women can get too catty. I worked in a reverse situation (more men than women) and I liked it more sometimes because of the lack of cattiness. Not lack of meanness, mind you, but less cattiness. Mean men are just as bad as catty women. One of them was my boss. I got him back by doing a bang up job and getting lots of compliments from our customers that he could not avoid. I also got a new job not long after that and never said a word about him trying to hire someone in to replace me.
I love writing goodbye notes. It's one way to prove you are a class act. At one of my jobs, I had several people come up to me and say, "That was the best adios letter I have ever seen."
I go to work with the attitude that I can do my job and learn something every day. Part of my job is getting patients motivated to go to therapy, participate and get well. Nobody has a good day every day, but you should at least make an attempt. One day builds on another and why not build something nice you can look back on later instead of a dung heap?
I am all for leaving toxic environments when required. No job should cause you to get an ulcer. If it does, it's time for a new job.
november17, ASN, RN
1 Article; 980 Posts
Here is a lesson I learned early on as a nurse aide in a similar toxic workplace-
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
If you hear other nurses badmouthing someone, go out of earshot because you don't need to be sitting there listening to it. If you ever have the urge to badmouth someone, keep it to yourself and bite your tongue. If you hear people talking about someone, don't mention it to the person that is being badmouthed/gossiped about - Nothing good will come of it.
You will avoid a LOT of problems that way.
I had a nurse that doesn't work very often ask me the other day, "Why is the deal with Coworker X? Everyone is always talking smack about her." I halfjokingly said, "it is my official policy to not discuss that kind of stuff!!" I left it at that.
People respect that.
Just stay above it, and don't worry too much about what your coworkers think. If it truely hurts your feelings, be cordial and professional in your dealings with them but leave it at that. You are the better person!
And don't underestimate people's motives either! I used to work with a nurse who would purposely and untruthfully tell people that other people were talking about them. Just because she was a huge jerk. She'd blow stuff out of proportion. If I said, "Sue must be tired today, because she's going slow" that nurse would go to Sue and say, "Hey November551 was just saying that you are lazy and shove all your work on the other aides." It really didn't make any sense why she was like that. That's just what she did, day in and day out. Eventually everyone more or less learned to ignore her but at first it caused a lot of problems. Obviously I probably should have just kept my mouth shut in the first place, but it was all part of the learning experience.