Trigger Warning!

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Mods : This may be in the wrong place as I have yet to figure out how to get to the break room.

I have been told at my school and facility that we are now required to give a trigger warning before we speak an opinion that may offend the sensibilities of another. Something on the lines of "I have to warn you that I am about to say something that may trigger a strong negative emotion in you!" This gives members of the intended audience the opportunity to recuse themselves from the conversation to avoid being triggered or otherwise negatively effected by what I am about to say!

IMHO political correctness is simply suppression of constitutionally protected free speech which is a basic human right in this country (USA). I am wondering how many others on this forum find this trend ridiculous. I am purposely not going into specific details or issues with this - just wondering how many of my fellows feel about this.

Hppy

Specializes in ER.

@WestCoastSunRN What's wrong with shopping on Amazon? It's a convenient and useful way to shop. One of my sons is working for then and the wages are decent, the hours flexible and benefits excellent.

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Specializes in Pediatric Burn ICU.
1 minute ago, TriciaJ said:

That's a bummer. My last job was in college health. There was no nursing program but I found the young people there generally renewed my faith in the future of humanity. Maybe it's not their age, but what nursing school does to them. I sometimes wonder if we should go back to the old hospital-based programs where your feelings were the least of anyone's worries.

Maybe that would help. I remember in nursing school, we did mock interviews to practice for when we had job interviews. Then we gave our opinions to each other in order to try and help them improve their interview techniques. Almost half of the people I got paired with made a comment to the effect of ,” don’t make eye contact when you speak because it seems aggressive.” I was bewildered by this. I interviewed for 3 units in the same week while looking for a job out of school. I brought this up to the unit managers that interviewed me and they all said that it’s a trend they have noticed in the last 5 years or so. No eye contact, lack of body language. Especially body language indicating confidence. The conversation unraveled about the newer work force topic for around 30 minutes each time. It let the unit managers vent about some frustrations and gave me a personal link to the manager, which I always try to obtain when interviewing. I got peer interviews scheduled for each unit, but the unit I really wanted offered me the job after the first interview. The reason I bring up all this in my reply is because I believe my greatest strength is the ability to engage in small talk, connect to people’s personal interests and discuss opinions without hurt feelings. These interpersonal communication techniques are becoming a lost art with all the impersonal technology. If these hospital programs would improve those skills for new nurses or students, I’d be all for it.

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Specializes in Surgical, Home Infusions, HVU, PCU, Neuro.

We have become too conforming as a society that instead of being a big girl or boy we have to make sure that anything we say needs to be articulated in such a sense where political, casual, professional, or ranting needs to be done to ensue that there are not any habored feelings of disagreement to any party privy to the conversation or not... SMH people need to get their big person pants on and get over it.

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Specializes in Psychiatry, Community, Nurse Manager, hospice.
On 2/16/2019 at 12:27 PM, hppygr8ful said:

Mods : This may be in the wrong place as I have yet to figure out how to get to the break room.

I have been told at my school and facility that we are now required to give a trigger warning before we speak an opinion that may offend the sensibilities of another. Something on the lines of "I have to warn you that I am about to say something that may trigger a strong negative emotion in you!" This gives members of the intended audience the opportunity to recuse themselves from the conversation to avoid being triggered or otherwise negatively effected by what I am about to say!

IMHO political correctness is simply suppression of constitutionally protected free speech which is a basic human right in this country (USA). I am wondering how many others on this forum find this trend ridiculous. I am purposely not going into specific details or issues with this - just wondering how many of my fellows feel about this.

Hppy

Oh, I would have a field day. Trigger warning, I'm going to the bathroom. Trigger warning, where are the pens? And in response to everyone else: I'm triggered by that.

But....

I think I remember that OP works Child Adolescent psych. When we are working with people with PTSD, mood regulation disorders and others who are working on controlling their reactions it IS good practice to give a trigger warning when they are just learning to control reactions. It should not last forever though. And it isn't the responsibility of the social environment. Eventually you need to learn to control your reactions to triggers without a warning.

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
1 hour ago, FolksBtrippin said:

Oh, I would have a field day. Trigger warning, I'm going to the bathroom. Trigger warning, where are the pens? And in response to everyone else: I'm triggered by that.

But....

I think I remember that OP works Child Adolescent psych. When we are working with people with PTSD, mood regulation disorders and others who are working on controlling their reactions it IS good practice to give a trigger warning when they are just learning to control reactions. It should not last forever though. And it isn't the responsibility of the social environment. Eventually you need to learn to control your reactions to triggers without a warning.

I do work in adolescent psych where the population is apt to be triggered by many things. I try to always keep things very professional at work!

Hppy

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13 minutes ago, hppygr8ful said:

I do work in adolescent psych where the population is apt to be triggered by many things. I try to always keep things very professional at work!

Hppy

In that case, all it takes is a poorly aimed fart and the whole place goes into 'lockdown.'

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
On 2/16/2019 at 12:27 PM, hppygr8ful said:

Mods : This may be in the wrong place as I have yet to figure out how to get to the break room.

I have been told at my school and facility that we are now required to give a trigger warning before we speak an opinion that may offend the sensibilities of another. Something on the lines of "I have to warn you that I am about to say something that may trigger a strong negative emotion in you!" This gives members of the intended audience the opportunity to recuse themselves from the conversation to avoid being triggered or otherwise negatively effected by what I am about to say!

IMHO political correctness is simply suppression of constitutionally protected free speech which is a basic human right in this country (USA). I am wondering how many others on this forum find this trend ridiculous. I am purposely not going into specific details or issues with this - just wondering how many of my fellows feel about this.

Hppy

I think the idea of giving a warning is stupid. On the other hand the idea of political correctness just used to be considered being polite and having manners. People should know their audience and know a person well enough to decide if this is a conversation you should be having in the environment you are in. The constitution protects you from government intrusion into your free speech. It doesn't prevent one person from telling another how they feel about their opinion. Most people who hate "political correctness" otherwise known as "being considerate of others", just want to be able to tell everyone what they think but don't actually want to hear what others think about the given subject and when they get push back, cry about their free speech being violated.

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Trigger warning: I hate the word trigger. Why is this a thing? I'm of the generation that apparently uses this word often... but it, along with the likes of "YOLO" and "boojie" annoys me.

It's 2019 and I can't stand it.

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Really? What is the world coming to that we have to give trigger warnings before we say something that might hurt someone's feelings?

I think it's great that we are being sensitive to others, but having to say "Trigger warning" is taking it too far. I find people are so easily offended these days that you can't say anything. If people are so easily "triggered" that they can't function without trigger warnings, maybe they need professional counselling so they can learn to cope with, address, and manage the feelings that come with triggers.

Or, maybe I am in the wrong and have completely misread and misunderstood trigger warnings.

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Specializes in Pediatric Burn ICU.

Where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?

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I’m scared for the world my children are growing up in. No eye contact? Trigger warnings?

We are going completely backwards as a society and it’s scary. Human beings can no longer cope appropriately and it’s leading to bad things happening. Increased school violence, increased suicides, increased mass murders, increased violence period.

What on earth on the people that decide these things thinking? The societal ramifications caused by this kind of thought is disturbing. I would like to say these people need to start taking responsibility for the decline of society, but that’s part of all this new thinking, nobody takes responsibility for anything anymore.

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On 2/17/2019 at 11:13 AM, SaggieRN87 said:

In my opinion, it is one thing to have an opinion that differs from others. However, speech that disempowers or leads to the discrimination of others is inappropriate and shouldn’t be given a platform in any arena.

I think that is the way it should work in ideal situations. But a lot of times people that do not agree with you can use that as an excuse to shut down your speech, as in the line of who decides what is discrimination and disempowering speech is very subjective.

At the end of the day, if someone really is making a speech that is hateful, you can use your own speech to explain why he is wrong.

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