What to do about issues with coworkers

[Grande_latte04]

I have come to this forum a lot for advice, and I am very grateful for all of the advice and insight I have received over the years: from being a prenursing student, nursing student, new nurse, relatively new nurse till now. 3 years into my career I have finally found a job that I think I enjoy and that makes me feel impactful and at peace. That being said, I wanted to get the wisdom of some older and more experienced nurses. I love your all’s insight and I look forward to your responses. 
 

I work in an excellent pediatric long term facility. My coworkers are excellent. I work evenings and nights. Our patients are acute but stable. Management is great, coworkers for the most part are excellent.  I have excellent mentors. Now for the negative… I work with another nurse who just irritates me. I have a long fuse, am not quick to anger and am very easy to work with(from what I’ve been told). So when I say this person irritates me, I think that means something. Regardless, we have worked together efficiently, we get the job done without too much small talk these days. Two nights ago, another nurse approached me about how irritating nurse Betty is because she refuses to update patients parents, charts on patients that are not her own, has to be reminded to wear an n95 and not a surgical mask and other general irritations.  I agreed with her, but left it at that. Last night I put my computer next to the Med cart I was going to start pulling my first patients meds from. I hadn’t started but had everything set up to start pulling. I realized I had to go the fridge for another med and left my work space there with the clear intention that I would be back in less than a minute or so. So I come back a minute later and she has moved my things aside, placed all of her med cups on what was going to be my work place and had pretty much taken over. All I needed was one more med so I asked her if she would please let me get back to my work space, as I was there fist and she was now interrupting my med pass. She motioned to me to share the work space, which I was not okay with as there are now multiple patients meds in one area and in my opinion just not a safe situation/ plus it made me feel distracted.. which is also not safe. I stood back and just started to feel like I was getting upset. Maybe it’s everything that’s happening in the world of nursing, maybe it’s because she was charge and had fewer and less acute patients than me, and was impeding my med pass, probably all of those things, but I said to her ina very calm yet obviously annoyed voice that she needs to be more cognizant of the people around her, what they are doing and what is and is not safe. 
 

later that night there was another teenaged patient who has behavioral issues and is Spanish speaking. PatieNt typically doesn’t have her o2 prob on when she’s awake because 1) she’s stable 2) she takes it off. It’s 3am patient should be sleeping but is wide awake and wants to watch tv/play with iPad. Nurse Betty calls me into help. I told her just to leave her be and give her an iPad or turn on the tv (she clearly is exercising her teenager autonomy.. and remember she’s stable). But nurse Betty insists I come in to help her. So I try speaking to her in Spanish (I’m conversational) and nurse Betty is trying to comfort the patient in English. And I tell her, you know she can not understand you? And that she wants to be left alone. Nurse Betty then accuses me of being disrespectful. Which looking back, maybe my tone was misinterpreted as disrespectful (but that might be a stretch). I didn’t say anything disrespectful and I said inside my head well you know what’s disrespectful taking over someone’s work space in the middle of a med pass (didn’t say this in real life). 
 

I am not a confrontational person. I get along with most people. I don’t know if it would be appropriate to  ring up my concerns to management, or if that would just be petty, and I should let it go? I do really feel the med cart issue was unsafe, but I hesitate about going to management about this or any of this. 
 

thnaks for all your wise help. 

[mimibrown, ADN, BSN]

Unfortunately, this is fairly typical behavior. I wouldn’t bring it up to management. You just have to learn how to get along with “sandpaper” coworkers. You will always have those kinds of coworkers. Learn to work around and ignore. She won’t change.

[HiddenAngels]

Same as mimi, just ignore her.  Some ppl really miss high school.  Don't allow yourself to be put in situations where any error or harm can be done.