To tattle tale or not tattle tale... that is the question.

gr8rnpjt, RN · Aug 2, 2005

The chief tattletale and I absolutely DESPISE each other. She is always on the unit, always in charge on the previous shift, and always gives me crappy assignments (pairs of busy pts not on pressors that I won't learn anything from occasionally she'll give me a single non-pressor pt but then I just end up admitting). Just the other day, after working 15 shifts in 19 days, I was shafted for the 15th time with a crappy assignment and complained about it to the night shift charge ( who had conveniently set up all her friends with 1:1s and preceptees to do all their work). Well by the time chief tattletale came in that morning she took me into the locker-room and started giving me this mean-ass lecture for about 30 minutes about the assignments and how I take it too personal and yada yada and I was just so exhausted that I started crying about a personal issue I brought up and she just left me in the locker room by myself crying...
bluesky-reading your story really makes me so glad I got out of clinical nursing. I remember situations like this and it makes me angry that 20 years later this stuff is still going on! I can't believe the cattiness of some nurses, we are all here to do a job, not sit on our butts doing as little as possible. My hats off to you congrats, I hope your year goes fast and best of luck in going for your CRNA and getting out of there. keep your chin up and don't let them get to you.

Mulan · Aug 2, 2005

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.

Agree.

mysticalwaters1 · Aug 4, 2005

aggh! This one coworker I mentioned earlier did it again but with me now! i disagreed with the pharmacisty about iv versus po dilaudid med. The pt had dilaudid iv the prior admission which was a day before this day. I called the md 2x already and when i called pharmacy why can't i get this med told me I HAD to clarify it with the md. I was ticked. I know pharmacy gets busy but I am too and got a hold of him over the phone and explained if someone told me this earlier I would have gladdly asked the md but now it is late at night and I already called him. our pharmacist do call the md for clarifications all the time but it seems when it gets late or sorry after 5pm don't call. I was NOT going to call again. I really thought I was right so I got the pharmacist to dispense a couple doses and passed to night shift it needs a clarification in the am and SPECIFICALLY told them I did not clarify it with the md. So of course the queen bee of my floor has been on such a speel lately harping on people. She told me in report I got this pt xenaderm b/c the pt is not being turned. Shut Up! I mean if it's merit FINE but she just likes to float the boat. This same person will ask mds is so and so not the primary md when obviously the pt chose another dr JUST to cause turmoil and make herself look good. Anyway so she had the pt the next morning and supposedly flipped b/c i did it that way. I really thought I was saving the md time and agravation to do it the way I did it. I have not problem calling md's but not with dealing with crap like i did that night. I was trying to get the pharmacist to call the md. I have to be more specific. I'll just demand it and if they don't forced to do it just to not deal with stuff like this. See this nurse lies or rather EXHAGERATES things to the point I really don't know what is really going on. She clarified it and got it po. Supposedly md wanted it po but the writing was debatalble. I saw IV. So this nurse is fine to my face not saying a word told her what happen supported me then I found out she made a big deal about it and wrote an incident report and all the works and probably going to the manager about it. Ok i did it wrong and can be serious but I thought I did it ok under the circumstances. I have no sympathy now I'll just call the md but I think it's kindof crappy how this nurse did it. I mean I have not even been in trouble for anything! Got people not calling mds for resp of 40/min, not signing meds. I don't know. So find out, the pt was c/o lots of pain and the dr changed it to iv anyway :angryfire Now I have to talk to the charge nurse who told me this b/c supposedly the dr MEANT it iv. So what i'm getting at is this nurse SPECIFICALLY looks for stuff to throw at other nurses. I think it's really low. I don't understand it either b/c like i said she lies and exhagerates and I think that's what happened here. She probably convinced the dr to do it po and it makes me look like i'm making up stuff as I go along which i DON'T! See you don't get the entire story. I don't understand b/c while most of us are staff nurses noone is applying for management so why does she feel the need to bring down other nurses. The only real thing is that i've noticed is she acts confident but I really feel she's insecure herself. It's like to make herself look good she tears down others.

I allways do the if it didn't harm the pt just talk to the nurse first and if it happens again or harms the pt you have to report it. Not garbage like I mentioned above.

See now I have to watch my back not just to do things correctly but with all these judgement calls have to watch out this one nurse won't disagree and wright something up. Sick. Makes a tough job even harder!

barefootlady, ADN, RN · Aug 4, 2005

I think I understand your post. The patient was hospitalized on IV med just a day or so ago, MD was not clear on how same med was to be given, pharmacy wanted med order clarified, it was late so no one called MD, just did what was done the last hospitalization.

Sorry, but here there would be a major problem, MD would be yelling at nurse and pharmacy. Dispensing medication is serious. Either the pharmacy or the nurse should have called and clarified the order. Too bad the hour was late and the MD's sleep would be disturbed. That is what the MD gets the big buck for.

I understand this other nurse is making this situation more difficult than she needs to make it but please, next time, just call. Just take your flogging with a wet noodle and chalk this up to a learning experience.

mysticalwaters1 · Aug 4, 2005

I think I understand your post. The patient was hospitalized on IV med just a day or so ago, MD was not clear on how same med was to be given, pharmacy wanted med order clarified, it was late so no one called MD, just did what was done the last hospitalization.
Sorry, but here there would be a major problem, MD would be yelling at nurse and pharmacy. Dispensing medication is serious. Either the pharmacy or the nurse should have called and clarified the order. Too bad the hour was late and the MD's sleep would be disturbed. That is what the MD gets the big buck for.
I understand this other nurse is making this situation more difficult than she needs to make it but please, next time, just call. Just take your flogging with a wet noodle and chalk this up to a learning experience.

yea i know! And I will. I don't want people thinking i'm making up my own thing. I really don't. I saw IV and I'm getting really upset b/c what I am finding out NOW is supposedly the md did write/want iV and this nurse SPECIFICALLy asked the dr for po to write it up as an error. What I'm getting at is I really hope she didn't do it that way but the charge nurse talked to me and she said the doctor meant IV to begin with. I'm getting 2 different stories. The 2nd one is from a very good detailed nurse. And that's what's upseting me. To think it was iv and then this nurse who talks with mds to get different orders and act like a big shot specifically got it po when what I'm getting now supposedly he did mean iv.

People can look at it this post and think i'm trying to avoid responsibility. No I know. Really but recently with this nurse i really do not know what she is up too.

barefootlady, ADN, RN · Aug 4, 2005

I understand what you are saying, but you missed my specific point. If the medication route had been clear early in this patients admission, this whole situation would have been avoided. This nurse would have no glossed over details over which to write an incident report.

Take this as a learning experience, about being detail orientated and about the character of this nurse. If you have ever worked in a teaching facility, then you know it is up to the nurses to educate the interns on writing for pain, sleep, and laxative meds. Saves a lot of stress and calling afterhours. I sort of look at this situation as like that. Everyone had a chance to learn from this incident.

You say this nurse talks to MD, well step up to the plate and talk to him too. I would want to make this MD, HN, and CN aware of my actions.

bluesky, BSN, RN · Aug 4, 2005

If you have ever worked in a teaching facility, then you know it is up to the nurses to educate the interns on writing for pain, sleep, and laxative meds. .

... and sedation, and pain control and eletrolyte supplementation and ... well just about everything really. ha ha ha :rotfl:

At least most of my R1s are thankful for the advice and don't manipulate, thank god.

markjrn · Aug 4, 2005

I then went home and had a seizure while talking to my husband about it on the phone.

It seems to me that if this job is causing you to react in this way, then it's time to leave.

lmpotter · Aug 5, 2005

I don't believe that as healthcare professionals we should be "Ratting" on our peers, but I do believe that as professionals we are obligated to report, in a factual manner, consistently bad practice. Where I practice, we have one particular nurse who when you follow him, you know already that you will spend the first four hours of your shift trying to clean up lines, charts, orders, etc. As a profession, we are obligated to report this type of consistently "Bad Practice" and it should reflect in the evaluation process.

Hey all.
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?

mattsmom81 · Aug 5, 2005

I don't believe that as healthcare professionals we should be "Ratting" on our peers, but I do believe that as professionals we are obligated to report, in a factual manner, consistently bad practice. Where I practice, we have one particular nurse who when you follow him, you know already that you will spend the first four hours of your shift trying to clean up lines, charts, orders, etc. As a profession, we are obligated to report this type of consistently "Bad Practice" and it should reflect in the evaluation process.

Oh definitely...consistently bad practice needs to be dealt with. I suspect the guy you are talking about is a management pet, right? They usually are when they get away with leaving a mess every shift, I've noted. I've worked with a few of those too (and it seems guys do this more than gals) They don't 'clean up' because they think they're above it or something.

I believe what we are talking about in this thread is a different issue..the intentional dogging of good coworkers to find 'something' in order to make trouble for them and/or make the tattler look good to higher ups.

traumahawk99 · Aug 5, 2005

unfortunately, it's par for the course in many nursing environments. a very authoritarian atmosphere encourages tattle tale behavior. i'd call that a management problem. after all, they're doing it because they're rewarded.

i'd go to the nurse, and remind her. if the behavior doesn't change and compromises patient safety, i think at some point you have a duty to tell management, but the nurse would know well ahead of time that i'd be doing that as a last resort.

running to management about every little detail just to stir up trouble is devisive, and does little to promote a team approach. it's better if you're looking out for each other rather than working against each other.

grannynurse FNP student · Aug 5, 2005

I don't believe that as healthcare professionals we should be "Ratting" on our peers, but I do believe that as professionals we are obligated to report, in a factual manner, consistently bad practice. Where I practice, we have one particular nurse who when you follow him, you know already that you will spend the first four hours of your shift trying to clean up lines, charts, orders, etc. As a profession, we are obligated to report this type of consistently "Bad Practice" and it should reflect in the evaluation process.

Hmmm, where have I heard this before? :uhoh3: Physicians, that is correct, they don't want to 'rat' out any of their peers. And who suffers???? :angryfire The patient :uhoh21: But we don't rat out another nurse, do we :imbar

Grannynurse :balloons: