Why are nurses so backbiting?

I am fortunate to have found a workplace, while certainly not perfect, where we help each other, are a team and very little of this goes on. I agree with llg; it's not exclusive to nursing. I was in the military and there were different ways people interacted with each other that included some more socially-accepted ways to bring each other down.

I would not let what you hear discourage you. Yes it happens, but not as universally as you may have been told.

I don't have it in my workplace, nor have I personally experienced it.

That being said, I love llg's post. I wish I could like it more than once.

This is my second career, 5th workplace as a nurse, and I have not ever seen anything remotely resembling NETY or what OP is saying here in either field. There is the normal dynamic that happens between folks who work together: some folks play nice and some don't. This is true in all workplaces that employ humans.

To me, it's simple: Avoid the folks who don't play nice; don't let them bully you; work hard; don't indulge in gossip; and be a good teammate. Never had a problem.

I don't see it in my workplace.

I see it in the hospital. I see the "keep your head down and don't ever correct a teacher" and I've seen it in my current place of work. Why does it seem that nurses want to one up each other or socially isolate people?

it seems that way because Nursing is primarily occupied by women.

I only experienced this once, and the manager encouraged it. When I wouldn't play along, they tried to discipline me on trumped up BS (thank you, union!).

As with any workplace, though, it's best to feel things out before you get critical.

It's almost always a function of poor management, no matter what type of workplace. If the leadership is weak or nonexistent, then people will try to elevate themselves, some at the expense of others. If strong leadership is provided, the low functioning personnel are weeded out and the overbearing ones are contained.

In predominantly male workplaces, self-promotion is still seen as "assertive" and "competitive". In a predominantly female workplace the same behaviour is labelled as "******" and "underhanded". So in addition to weak leadership in places, sexism is still very much alive.

As we see from the above post from a male nurse.

I've seen lateral aggression in both nursing and in my prior field, and while I'm a big fan of standing up for myself the research tells us that this behavior flourishes in environments where management is weak or laissez faire so that the people who engage in it rarely suffer consequences. It's a systemic rather than individual problem. It's more common in high stress environments, like nursing units, the military, LEOs, etc. It's also more likely to happen between those with resources and those without, which is why it's more likely to happen to new nurses (regardless of age).

This power differential perpetuates the cycle because standing up for yourself, while noble, doesn't grant you access to resources, especially when arguably the most significant resource we have is experience. Thus, if the experienced nurses use their experience as a cudgel, less experienced nurses in an environment with weak management have only two options: submit to incivility or work blind and dangerous. Or find a new place to work, which may or may not be an option for a less experienced nurse, depending on their location.

As a mental health guy, all of this makes sense to me. Both the Joint Commission and the Institute of Medicine have identified it as a known cause of harm to patients. I'm glad people have found workplaces where it doesn't happen, but I frequently get the sense that those who haven't experienced it believe it doesn't happen. Which is odd to me. But c'est la vie.