There are quite a few nurses on my unit who have scored points with management and made a select group of other nurses look pretty bad by ratting out on them about pretty small insignificant stuff like so and so didn't date her lines or so and so didn't put one assessment in the computer for q 1hr neuro checks or so and so didn't have time to change her lines (because, well so and so admitted a 1:1 pt at 17:30 while still keeping the other stable pt anyway) and then there's always the arcane so and so didn't follow SICU protocol z even though she used critical thinking to solve the problem and advised the residents immediately, etc.
I've NEVER been a snitch for little stuff that didn't compromise the pt. As such, I have ended up protecting a few of the nurses who have now turned into snitch nurses. They are well respected not because they don't make mistakes but because the rest of us aren't petty enough to report them.
Well at any rate there are quite a few of them on my unit and I don't want to start biyatching about them but I'm tired of helping them look squeeky clean at the expense of others including myself and my friends.
Lately, one of my friends received a pretty crappy eval because of this phenomenon. She's more over it than I am... but my strong sense of justice is not letting me let go.
Personally, I think it's more important to not neglect the patient than to get caught up in your interpersonal relationships at work. It's not the patient's fault that there's conflict going on, and it might not be taken care of by the person the patient is assigned to. I do agree that it shouldn't be her responsibility to do someone else's work, but the patients shouldn't have to suffer because of internal conflict.
I think it's very important to continue to be compassionate in our times of distress. It shows the true measure of a nurse when they show how they react under the worse situations. So please don't forget to be compassionate to patients, regardless of who they "belong" to. No one's perfect, but remember who you're there to help.
Yes, you are exactly right. I am well known on my unit for being one of the most caring nurses. I always allow visitors for many hours, spend much time answering questions, use therapeutic touch often, etc. I am often told how gentle and caring I am by my patients. I have to admit, in all honesty, however, that I am beginning to wear on the edges. Especially combative patients who are confused. I am not as patient and well able to manage them as I used to be. I no longer look forward to going to work.
My solution is to stick to my 2 weekend shifts only. On weekend days the staff are all awesomely cool. I addore every one of them and we help each other alot. I don't mind getting slammed when I work with them cuz we really help each other out. It's true that the chief tattletale works her overtime on Saturdays but she is easily avoidable when all the other nurses are cool. It's too bad I have to banish myself to these two shifts but I guess I'll just start working ER elsewhere or something during the week.
Oh don't I know that line all too well. In 2003, I was told the same thing about the unit I ended up deciding to give a "chance at" working on. BIG mistake! I "revolved" myself right on out of there after almost a year of stress-filled drama. Do NOT settle for crap like that. There is no way I want to climb out of my warm bed, leave my comfy home environment filled with peace and tranquility to spend more than twelve hours in a TOXIC work environment.
Penny Lane........protect your license and your sanity. :icon_hug:
Thank you so much for the reply. I totally agree with you. I've only been there for a short time and I feel if I leave too early it will look bad for my next job.
Well I just wanted to tell you of my recent experiences and I think I can probably top all of you posters.
When I interviewed for this job manager stated they were a tight group and if you don't fit in you will be out. Well as of Wednesday morning I am out........
She stated she feels "friction" between staff but no one has said anything?????
Yes, being the new girll I have made some mistakes but that comes with learning to know policy and such and how they do things as opposed to how other facilities do things.
And yes I have made some statements that if you read my last posting about a psycho homicidal pt admitted to the general floor to the 2nd in charge that she didn't agree with. So I guess I was on the shi## list since those two are so far up each others A$$.
Anyway she commented that she thinks I am more suited for a supervisor in a nursing home because get this.... I care about my pts, independent worker, give good pt education well organized and document well,
I just don't fit into the group that works there and she didn't want to have to be working 80 hrs a week because people might start calling off because so and so is working tonight. Well I would like to be a fly on the wall to see who will be working 80 hrs a week this month since everyone and his brother is on vacation and I was willing to work my 40 + 20-30 a pay to help out.
All I can say is to bad for them they lost a good decent nurse who stood up for and cared for her pts.
Specializes in Happily semi-retired; excited for the whole whammy.
Well I just wanted to tell you of my recent experiences and I think I can probably top all of you posters.
When I interviewed for this job manager stated they were a tight group and if you don't fit in you will be out. Well as of Wednesday morning I am out........
She stated she feels "friction" between staff but no one has said anything?????
Yes, being the new girll I have made some mistakes but that comes with learning to know policy and such and how they do things as opposed to how other facilities do things.
And yes I have made some statements that if you read my last posting about a psycho homicidal pt admitted to the general floor to the 2nd in charge that she didn't agree with. So I guess I was on the shi## list since those two are so far up each others A$$.
Anyway she commented that she thinks I am more suited for a supervisor in a nursing home because get this.... I care about my pts, independent worker, give good pt education well organized and document well,
I just don't fit into the group that works there and she didn't want to have to be working 80 hrs a week because people might start calling off because so and so is working tonight. Well I would like to be a fly on the wall to see who will be working 80 hrs a week this month since everyone and his brother is on vacation and I was willing to work my 40 + 20-30 a pay to help out.
All I can say is to bad for them they lost a good decent nurse who stood up for and cared for her pts.
I'd document all of this and contact the owner(s) of this nursing home. They should know that their residents' care is secondary to the clique staying together! I don't know if you have any legal recourse, if this happened during a probationary period, but how revolting!
So maybe you should quit feeling sorry for yourself, try to make friends with the queen bee, and learn from every patient you take care of instead of whining about your assignment.
My first thought when reading that was, "How does one make friends with the queen bee?" It's simply not rational. How in the world can you make friends with someone who's overriding impulse is to abuse his/her coworkers and create friction among the staff?
Most of the stuff discussed in this thread has to do with horizontal violence/bullying/mobbing. We might, as a profession, be better off focusing on how to decrease or eliminate this kind of behavior in the workplace.
There are quite a few nurses on my unit who have scored points with management and made a select group of other nurses look pretty bad by ratting out on them about pretty small insignificant stuff like so and so didn't date her lines or so and so didn't put one assessment in the computer for q 1hr neuro checks or so and so didn't have time to change her lines (because, well so and so admitted a 1:1 pt at 17:30 while still keeping the other stable pt anyway) and then there's always the arcane so and so didn't follow SICU protocol z even though she used critical thinking to solve the problem and advised the residents immediately, etc.
I've NEVER been a snitch for little stuff that didn't compromise the pt. As such, I have ended up protecting a few of the nurses who have now turned into snitch nurses. They are well respected not because they don't make mistakes but because the rest of us aren't petty enough to report them.
Well at any rate there are quite a few of them on my unit and I don't want to start biyatching about them but I'm tired of helping them look squeeky clean at the expense of others including myself and my friends.
Lately, one of my friends received a pretty crappy eval because of this phenomenon. She's more over it than I am... but my strong sense of justice is not letting me let go.
Any thoughts?
Just one of the many things I hate about nursing. Acting like a petty "snitch" prevents real teamwork -- I can't stand it when someone gets caught up in the trivial details & can't take in the bigger picture. Now that I'm in the ICU & have seen a wider variety of nursing styles, I think it's more of an ICU nursing phenomenon than on the floor.
Just one of the many things I hate about nursing. Acting like a petty "snitch" prevents real teamwork -- I can't stand it when someone gets caught up in the trivial details & can't take in the bigger picture. Now that I'm in the ICU & have seen a wider variety of nursing styles, I think it's more of an ICU nursing phenomenon than on the floor.
I'm pretty limited in my floor experience but the few times I have been floated I haven't seen that type of behavior. I think maybe the floor nurses are too busy to engage in that behavior. I mean, not to say that ICU nurses aren't busy_ but the sheer volume of patients and meds on the floor makes it pretty hard to have a really "slow" day, I would think. I mean you don't see too many ICU nurses volunteering for a med-surg float, ya know!
Oh I've seen the kind of behavior described on the general wards too...they'll schmooze with the charge nurses and tattle back to management...in order to get the cushy assignment and be known as 'in' with the boss.
There are quite a few nurses on my unit who have scored points with management and made a select group of other nurses look pretty bad by ratting out on them about pretty small insignificant stuff like so and so didn't date her lines or so and so didn't put one assessment in the computer for q 1hr neuro checks or so and so didn't have time to change her lines (because, well so and so admitted a 1:1 pt at 17:30 while still keeping the other stable pt anyway) and then there's always the arcane so and so didn't follow SICU protocol z even though she used critical thinking to solve the problem and advised the residents immediately, etc.
I've NEVER been a snitch for little stuff that didn't compromise the pt. As such, I have ended up protecting a few of the nurses who have now turned into snitch nurses. They are well respected not because they don't make mistakes but because the rest of us aren't petty enough to report them.
Well at any rate there are quite a few of them on my unit and I don't want to start biyatching about them but I'm tired of helping them look squeeky clean at the expense of others including myself and my friends.
Lately, one of my friends received a pretty crappy eval because of this phenomenon. She's more over it than I am... but my strong sense of justice is not letting me let go.
Any thoughts?
I have recently been reading some research on this phenomena. It is actually classed as a type of bullying and apparently is rampant amoung nurses. The research I was reading stated that this is the result of competition within nursing, or if you find you are being hassled or having your work 'nit picked' by supervisors that it is a vertical chain in which the pressure placed from the upper levels of the establishment sifts down and rests on the worker bees! Not fair but does happen... ALOT.
Perhaps some way to decrease the competitive nature of the workplace might help... although I would not have any idea on how u would go about this!
Oh I've seen the kind of behavior described on the general wards too...they'll schmooze with the charge nurses and tattle back to management...in order to get the cushy assignment and be known as 'in' with the boss.
I think probably in reality, every floor has at least one nurse like that......part of the problem is that the other nurses put up with it.
We have one nurse like that and although I like her very much in other ways, I have stood up to her. One day, she had a triage patient that was in early labor. She was going to be medicated and sent home to sleep (and hopefully go into good, active labor). Now, we do this a lot on evenings but this queenbee nurse (who is mostly a day person) hadn't done much of this before. First, she asked me if I thought this medicinal management was okay. I told her yes, and that it is common practice during the evening/nights. I had no problem given her my advice on that issue. She then (a few minutes later) asks ME if I will give this patient these meds. I asked her why she didn't want to give a shot and she proceeds to say "because if anything happened to her or the baby, I would never forgive myself." Well, I refused on several grounds. First, I did not know that patient, and second, I told the nurse that I found it highly offensive that she would care about her license and not mine. I refused to do it for her and I told her why.
This nurse is also the type to whine and get others to do her vag exams for her as well as her IV's. Now we all help each other out on occasion and do tasks for each other but this behavior goes well beyond. Mind you, this is our nurse with her Masters who considers herself a cut above everyone else. She has always tried to stay in good with our manager(s). She's the first one to go running to the manager with all her information. How pathetic! Bottom line is that I think deep down she is scared of most everything and would be unable to move on to a different position or hospital.
So much for my queen bee story........................
I can sooooooooo relate. We have quite a few petty nurses and a lot of them are on dayshift so I have to give them report. Some of the stuff they complain about is just ridiculous ("she didn't restock the cotton balls, so I had to go get them" "she only left the isolette with 2 diapers in it...." "there was a spot of blood on the linen and she didn't change it" etc). It does annoy me and I admit I had an evil kind of happiness wash over me one night when I found out that Ms Perfect herself had been charting the wrong vent settings all shift. But, instead of being petty and ratting her out, I just pointed out her mistake to her when she got back so that she could fix her charting herself (course, she insisted that she was right the whole time even though the RT charted something different and the vent itself was set how the RT charted it when I got there....).
Day shift here is supposed to change the lines, but sometimes they are busy and don't get it done. My philosophy is that's why it's a 24 hour unit. I actually said that to a day shift nurse who was apologizing to me for not getting the line change done and she looked absolutely shocked! I mean, if she had been sitting reading a magazine I would be annoyed, but she was busy, so who cares that I have to change lines? I'm paid to be there whether I change lines or don't.
I just don't think it's worth bringing petty stuff to management because I don't want to be involved with that kind of sillyness. If I had a bad eval over some petty things I would express my opinions about the whole atmosphere though. I would not bring up specific people and complain about them because that just compounds the problem, but I would say something like "Do you think it's possible that this type of thing happens with all the staff, but some of us just choose not to bring it to management's attention?". I think coworkers influencing evals sets up a bad situation
You have a great attitude towards this kind of stuff. I also believe that sometimes we all have a busy shift and complaining about what didn't get done is futile. Just do it and remember the day will come when you are in the same shoes. I also think that this kind of situation is in every work place. It drives me insane.
I "revolved" myself right on out of there after almost a year of stress-filled drama.
Do NOT settle for crap like that. There is no way I want to climb out of my warm bed, leave my comfy home environment filled with peace and tranquility to spend more than twelve hours in a TOXIC work environment. 
bluesky, BSN, RN
864 Posts
Yes, you are exactly right. I am well known on my unit for being one of the most caring nurses. I always allow visitors for many hours, spend much time answering questions, use therapeutic touch often, etc. I am often told how gentle and caring I am by my patients. I have to admit, in all honesty, however, that I am beginning to wear on the edges. Especially combative patients who are confused. I am not as patient and well able to manage them as I used to be. I no longer look forward to going to work.
My solution is to stick to my 2 weekend shifts only. On weekend days the staff are all awesomely cool. I addore every one of them and we help each other alot. I don't mind getting slammed when I work with them cuz we really help each other out. It's true that the chief tattletale works her overtime on Saturdays but she is easily avoidable when all the other nurses are cool. It's too bad I have to banish myself to these two shifts but I guess I'll just start working ER elsewhere or something during the week.