Were you a bully in high school?

[Koalified]

I was scrolling on Reddit and one question that came up was, “What are your high school bullies doing now?”. Interestingly many said that their hs bullies are now nurses. Do you think the nursing profession attracts former bullies? How many of you were bullies in high school?

[monkey205]

Do bullies even recognize themselves? 

[Koalified]

19 minutes ago, monkey205 said:

Do bullies even recognize themselves? 

Some might after years away from high school with various life experiences. My guess is many won’t recognize that they were bullies. I remembering a funny episode on some show where the character who was going to a HS reunion was nervous bc she was bullied. Come to find out she was actually the bully in HS. 

[~Shrek~]

Yes, nursing attracts bullies. But the type of bullying I have experienced in nursing isn’t the stereotypical high school bullying that we normally see on TV. With nurses it’s about power and stress. The stakes are higher in nursing. A squabble with a coworker can hurt the patient with injury or even death. Some examples are poor training for new grad nurses, refusing to help a nurse if they need help caring for a patient, giving nurses that they don’t like unsafe workloads with patient assignments, etc. in an office setting, mistakes can make a big impact but they are hardly ever if at all life or death. 

[LibraNurse27, BSN, RN]

7 minutes ago, ~Shrek~ said:

in an office setting, mistakes can make a big impact but they are hardly ever if at all life or death. 

Yes, I definitely felt this pressure in nursing and often wished I worked in a lower stakes setting. I agree with the poster who said there are also a lot of bullies in law enforcement, and that has deadly consequences as we all saw throughout 2020. My friend in law enforcement described the culture of the academy as bullying future officers into bullying suspects. Yikes. I am lucky to have always worked with great people, but the horror stories here have taught me a lot about the culture of bullying within nursing too. I hope with the recent spotlight on mental health things may get better!

[~Shrek~]

2 hours ago, monkey205 said:

Do bullies even recognize themselves? 

I was never a bully, but when I was age 12 or so, I had a crush on this boy in my class. He was a handsome kid, geeky, and a little crazy based off of his MySpace profile: my type. I thought the best way to flirt with him would be to tease his name, which was unique. He clapped back right away and didn’t seem pleased. I took it as “I am ugly and fat and therefore he was annoyed by me flirting with him”. A few years later when my brain more fully developed, I realized that my flirting attempt was horrible and that I probably insulted him and scared him away, and that my attempt at being witty and flirtatious probably came off as rude. There are a few instances of this that I remember from my childhood school years, but the name thing was the most cringeworthy of them all. 

[Animal House R.N., ADN, CNA, LVN]

I was bullied a great deal because I was a socially non diagnosed adhd female. 

[xsoymilk, ADN, BSN]

Yes. 
 

I was bullied (badly) in middle school. Hair pulled, tripped in hallway and down the stairs, glue on my seat, water in my locker, all that fun stuff. I was made fun of due to my ‘cheap clothes from China’ (we were very poor immigrant family at that time and all the kids wore Gap apparently).
 

I feel like that experience turned me into a bully in high school. I hung out with all the wrong people, who did the same things that was done to me before. The worst part was I felt guilty about it each time, but proceeded with a smile. It wasn’t until senior year that I changed. 
 

Thankfully, during a high school reunion couple years back, I was able to apologize to those I bullied that they laughed it off. I still feel guilty till this day. 

[DesiDani]

Hey this reminds me of one my BRILLIANT Threads, "Sympathy for nurse Ratchet". 

Sometimes in nursing you are almost forced to be the "mean girl". If you don't then patients, Doctors, other nurses, charge nurse, unit mgrs, and lastly staffing will eat you alive.

[DesiDani]

Also there is a difference between being a bully, and bullying a known bully to set them straight. Those coworkers are like legends. Love them.

[SpaceCadet77]

I think nursing CREATES bullies. Nurses have to be the primary clinician overseeing an expanding team of subspecialities and clinically complex disease processes and treatments. However, we are still often dismissed as "bedpan-wielding handmaids"

That leads to frustration and resentment which leads to bullying people who don't respect us.

[subee, MSN, CRNA]

9 hours ago, SpaceCadet77 said:

I think nursing CREATES bullies. Nurses have to be the primary clinician overseeing an expanding team of subspecialities and clinically complex disease processes and treatments. However, we are still often dismissed as "bedpan-wielding handmaids"

That leads to frustration and resentment which leads to bullying people who don't respect us.

It's good to know the difference between aggressiveness and assertiveness.   If you respond to bullies with assertiveness , you probably can't go wrong.  

[Emergent, RN]

By the way, I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, and we had bullies back then. It's not some new term made up by a bunch of snowflakes. There really are bullies in the world.