What kills me..... (VENT)!!!

[shoegalRN]

I'm sorry but this will be a vent. After working 13+ busy shift in the ER, I come home to log on to here and it simply kills me that NON-nurses (including those in nursing school, or taking pre-reqs, or those who have not even graduated from high school yet!) comes on here and think they know what it's like to really be a nurse.

Oh really????

All the "I will never be that kind of nurse" threads, but never spent one HOUR in our Dansko's......

And the kicker? Telling how you will "handle a doctor when calling one", when yet, you have not had to actually deal with a doctor regarding direct PATIENT CARE!

The superior-know-it-all-attitude simply kills me!

All I can say is when SOME of you actually get into a nursing program, get through the nursing program, pass boards, be lucky enough to actually land a RN job, and then start WORKING as a licensed RN, I sure hope you are TEACHABLE! Because I can only imagine how your orientation will go, because it's simply not easy to teach people who already know it all or got all the answers, without really knowing what they don't know! And then we'll get flooded with threads about how nurses eat their young!

[TDCHIM]

Speaking of grated nerves, I got some.

I'm happy to agree to disagree with someone who knows what they're talking about, but otherwise I'd prefer they recognize their own ignorance and stay silent.

I guess I find the attitude that non-nurses should be seen but not heard, which has been expressed several times in this thread, a little distressing.

I'm a non-nurse, and I make no bones about it. I'll never be a nurse or any other provider of direct patient care - I lack the physical ability to do so. I'm just here to learn so I don't become one of those out-of-touch paper pushing administrators who cause all kinds of havoc for direct care providers. But learning isn't best achieved solely by reading silently - discussion with those who are knowledgeable is a big part of it too.

Now, I'm never going to have the temerity to post in a vent thread to tell a nurse "I would never handle xxxxxxx like that if I were a nurse!" or anything like that. I'm certainly not endorsing the endless threads about nursing schools, pay questions, "Is nursing right 4 me?", etc that show up in the general forum. However, I think there's a difference between wanting those posters to have some common sense or restrict student-interest questions to student forums and wanting non-nurses to "recognize their own ignorance and stay silent."

I contribute when I can do so intelligently. Sometimes I make suggestions or give advice, when I have experience that is applicable to the issue being discussed (i.e., problems with management, FMLA issues, certain pain management situations, etc.). I ask questions to gain information or to raise the possibility of an alternate option while emphasizing my uncertainty or lack of knowledge about that option. By contributing, I have learned a great deal more from this forum than I would have by simply reading responses from others. I doubt I'm alone in that. I also think I have occasionally helped other posters on this site, though perhaps I am being presumptuous in believing so.

I'm sympathetic to the OP's irritation over holier-than-thou responses from those who haven't been in the trenches. However, I'm concerned that trying to create an exclusive "experienced nurses only" forum, restricting non-nurses to a specific "non-nurses" forum, or just allowing frustration to make all non-nurses into convenient straw men for the sins of the stupid and rude will weaken the site and its overall usefulness. I love AllNurses. I've learned a great deal about some of the problems nurses encounter from this site and its contributors, and I'm hoping to use that knowledge when I get into the real world - even if my world is populated by patients on paper rather than in the flesh.

[shoegalRN, RN]

To the OP. If this site is giving you more anxiety then maybe you shoudn't post or read. Seems like all it does is give you more grief. It's an internet forum and anyone can post who wants to. Don't post if it bothers you this much.

*sigh*

I have a right to post a thread or read this site if I want to. If you have noticed, I do NOT normally post vent threads, but if I want to vent about something I have the same right as you do to respond to my post.

[SWS RN, ASN, RN]

Let's just cut to the chase....

I don't think that any of the *experienced* nurses are objecting to non nurses or new nurses reading or posting...

Just to the inane comments that have been repeatedly made involving statements on topics of which they could have absolutely NO knowege or experience...

I go back and quote the *it isn't as bad as you say* statement...

PRICELESS!

am I correct, Afrocentric?

s

[PatMac10,RN, RN]

I just re-read that post where they said "it's not as bad as you say". That poster never said that. She was quoting what her multiple family members, who are nurses, said. So she never claimed to have any experience in that she was simply reporting what her family said. I look at it now and see that what she posted has been misconstrued. The one's to "flame" at if you really are that mad, are her family members who are nurses.

I do see that comments like that often stir up unnecessary comments, because it can be taken offensively, I don't see how, but I guess it can be. I guess I'll understand better when I'm a nurse.

I don't think she meant to start a war when quoting others words.

Well I Understand were you are coming from but I am in nursing school and I dont think i know everything, but i do have family in nursing who says its not as bad as you say it is.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

i can't believe there are so many angry people on this website. and they do eat their young. they have forgotten about being a nursing stident, getting their first job and trying to learn and fit in. there are experts now. does it give them a right to put down new nurses? nursing is a team work and should stay this way.

although it's been over three decades, i vividly remember what it's like to be a nursing student, to get my first job, to be thrown into the mayhem without a preceptor and to try to learn to fit in. i didn't have the convenient excuse that "nurses eat their young" when i couldn't fit in or get along with my co-workers. i figured it was me, and strove to learn so i, too could be one of the expert nurses. these days, it sems that rather than examine themselves and their contributions to problems they're having fitting in at work, new nurses seem to cry "nurses eat their young." it's as if that gives them cart blanche to criticize anyone who is trying, however ineptly, to teach them something, help them fit in or critique some aspect of their practice that needs work.

of course we're angry when someone who has never walked in our shoes comes along to tell us how they would be doing our job because of course they would be so much better at it than us. or how if we're grumpy, not gifted preceptors or attempt to correct them, we're hateful old hags who ought to just quit our jobs.

the thing is, i've walked in your shoes. i've been a student, i've been a new nurse. i've changed jobs and had difficulty fitting in. but until you've actually been a nurse, you have no idea what it's really like. so to tell us how we should be doing our jobs, or that we shouldn't vent or that we should be "more supportive of newbies" (whatever that means) is irritating at best and perhaps even stupid.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

oh yes they do..my first nursing job (magnet hospital) was a terrible experience.i work in home health now,and never even came close to what i have experienced in the magnet hospital...people at my current place of employment seems so much more understanding;i'm not being ridiculed,if i dont know something i get help.so yes it does happens.

i don't know you and know nothing about your "terrible experience." i will say, however, that just because you had a terrible experience does not mean that your colleagues eat their young or that you were eaten. sometimes it really is your fault. i'm not saying it was in your case; i'm saying that just because you had a bad experience it doesn't mean all your preceptors were bad.

[PatMac10,RN, RN]

This is an honest question. In all of the posts/ threads I've participated in, or read, (even old one's) I've never seen one person say to a poster " You need to do this because what you did was wrong" or something to that effect, so where are you all getting the notion that someone is trying to tell you to do your job?

Don't get me wrong, they might be wrong for saying some of the stuff they said, and may have actually told you to do your job in a certain way, but I haven't seen it. Or do you feel that we are telling you how do do your job's when we give our opinion or say how we would have done this or that? (Just wanted to know for future references)

I see why you guys would get a little mad if someone was doing that. Sorry.

[SWS RN, ASN, RN]

although it's been over three decades, i vividly remember what it's like to be a nursing student, to get my first job, to be thrown into the mayhem without a preceptor and to try to learn to fit in. i didn't have the convenient excuse that "nurses eat their young" when i couldn't fit in or get along with my co-workers. i figured it was me, and strove to learn so i, too could be one of the expert nurses. these days, it sems that rather than examine themselves and their contributions to problems they're having fitting in at work, new nurses seem to cry "nurses eat their young." it's as if that gives them cart blanche to criticize anyone who is trying, however ineptly, to teach them something, help them fit in or critique some aspect of their practice that needs work.

of course we're angry when someone who has never walked in our shoes comes along to tell us how they would be doing our job because of course they would be so much better at it than us. or how if we're grumpy, not gifted preceptors or attempt to correct them, we're hateful old hags who ought to just quit our jobs.

the thing is, i've walked in your shoes. i've been a student, i've been a new nurse. i've changed jobs and had difficulty fitting in. but until you've actually been a nurse, you have no idea what it's really like. so to tell us how we should be doing our jobs, or that we shouldn't vent or that we should be "more supportive of newbies" (whatever that means) is irritating at best and perhaps even stupid.

ruby,

extremely eloquent and well said.

i entirely agree and with that being said, have nothing more to add.

s

[Nurselacey]

Right on Ruby!!! I some times think it is a waste of time reading allnurses because of all the non-nursing people posting..If you are not a nurse you don't get it PERIOD!!

[PatMac10,RN, RN]

a nurse to do this or that. Anyone is free to look up their states nurse practice act. I visit the NC BON website often and read up on everything, an no it by no means make me a "know-it-all" and it doesn't mean I know everything about nursing. Then there are those threads where commons sense and morals come into play and years of nursing don't effect the answer, like was it wrong for this nurse to take a few of her patients pills because she had a really bad HA? No it's not by any means, does that make me an expert on nursing, gosh no.

It seems more and more new nurses/non-nurses are joining this site. We, or at least I, learn a whole lot from actively participating in and reading the threads on here, I really enjoy coming to allnurses.com and certainly don't think it's a waste of my time. And yes your right when it comes to situation on threads that you would have to have expereince as a nurse, we don't get it and never will until we are in that position. Even with that I feel everyone's comments and questions are informative especially the experienced nurses, as I assume your a nurse. When we communicate with you guys it helps draw people who really need to be here to nursing.

Sorry you had such a bad experience again.

[eriksoln, BSN, RN]

a nurse to do this or that. Anyone is free to look up their states nurse practice act. I visit the NC BON website often and read up on everything, an no it by no means make me a "know-it-all" and it doesn't mean I know everything about nursing. Then there are those threads where commons sense and morals come into play and years of nursing don't effect the answer, like was it wrong for this nurse to take a few of her patients pills because she had a really bad HA? No it's not by any means, does that make me an expert on nursing, gosh no.

It seems more and more new nurses/non-nurses are joining this site. We, or at least I, learn a whole lot from actively participating in and reading the threads on here, I really enjoy coming to allnurses.com and certainly don't think it's a waste of my time. And yes your right when it comes to situation on threads that you would have to have expereince as a nurse, we don't get it and never will until we are in that position. Even with that I feel everyone's comments and questions are informative especially the experienced nurses, as I assume your a nurse. When we communicate with you guys it helps draw people who really need to be here to nursing.

Sorry you had such a bad experience again.

I've noticed this, heck, I made a thread about it a long long time ago. The number of non-nurses posting (I don't consider CNA's and students in the "non-nurse" category for some reason) has increased.

I attribute this to unemployment. Lots of people sitting at home, no interviews for the day, thinking about what they want to do with their lives. So, they start to consider nursing and go on a couple sites to see what the word about it is.

[TDCHIM]

Right on Ruby!!! I some times think it is a waste of time reading allnurses because of all the non-nursing people posting..If you are not a nurse you don't get it PERIOD!!

So no non-nurses should post on AllNurses?