Why don't nurses bond?

bagladyrn, RN · Nov 2, 2015

Whatever, dude. My hospital is exactly like Grey's Anatomy. There's a hurricane or an earthquake or some kind of explosion every week, and every spring we're left with a cliffhanger that we don't find out the answer to until fall. Will the tough as nails director of nursing finally be forced to resign by the evil medical director/ex-lover? Will that unfair complaint teach the boundary-impaired young nurse not to get so involved with patients, or will she lose her license and be forced to leave the show, er, hospital?

Dogen - I once (many years ago) worked at a psych hospital that approached that level. One shift a coworker told the supervisor "I can't float to that unit. If I do I'll be working with my ex-husband's first wife AND his current fiancÃ©e." Said ex also worked at the facility.

Alex Egan, LPN, EMT-B · Nov 2, 2015

I Also, I get there's fire science and all but there are very specific protocols to dealing with what they do. There's a fire, let's put water on it. There, done, let's go back to the station and go get groceries and do barbecue and chill and play XBox for the next 24 hours or whenever there's another call. If nurses got to play XBox together there would be arguments on EBP for Call of Duty or Dance Central.

Don't worry the firefighters all think your job is super easy even though they have no idea about nursing.

Color within the lines of your actual knowledge. Otherwise you draw a picture of a fool.

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Nov 2, 2015

I think it's because there are so many ways to approach certain situations and a lot of what some nurses do can be a little dogmatic. What one nurse does might be a complete abomination to another even if it's not necessarily dangerous for the patient and the outcomes for the different nursing interventions might be similar if not equal.
I had a bit of an epiphany the other day walking into clinical. I saw someone using a walker and there was also an arm injury so the walker didn't look like the best idea. I thought of how one nurse might think this is fine but if you ask 10 others there would be 10 other "better, safer, optimal" ways of dealing with this issue. One nurse might say, "This pt needs a wheelchair until that arm is healed because that is unsafe." Another might say, "If the pt is using a wheelchair then they might become more debilitated so the walker is fine." and another might say, "The pt should be using a 4-point cane to avoid using the injured arm at all." And then PT will come in and do something totally weird and slap some brace on the pt that no one has ever seen before that is completely bizarre and foreign to us all so we have no clue on what to do with it or how to educate the pt. So, I think sometimes, the difference of opinion and the perception of each of the nurses' motivations (i.e. "wheelchair nurse" is lazy and "walker nurse" doesn't care about the pts because they don't want to ask for a consult and "4-point cane nurse" is just bonkers...and PT get out of here with that crazy brace thing) is what causes the divide and prevents bonding. The knowledge foundation of nursing is so vast that it's hard to find a common ground.
Firefighters also have to be together for much longer stretches of time than nurses do so there's that. Also, I get there's fire science and all but there are very specific protocols to dealing with what they do. There's a fire, let's put water on it. There, done, let's go back to the station and go get groceries and do barbecue and chill and play XBox for the next 24 hours or whenever there's another call. If nurses got to play XBox together there would be arguments on EBP for Call of Duty or Dance Central.
There's also a whole firefighters are usually males and nurses are usually females thing but I'm not getting into that. I'll save it for another day.

You are really oversimplifying and creating conflict where one does not always exist. It's rather apparent you don't know much about firefighting at all. It's significantly more than Xbox & pouring water on flames.

I've worked many places as a tech and now a nurse where there are strong bonds with the nursing and associate staff. When I worked nights in the ED my coworkers had your back and would do anything to support one another. Our shift parties off site were second to none and carefully planned so that anyone from nights who wanted to attend could safely do so even if working the night before or after. As a low man on the totem poll tech the nurses chipped in to send a cab for me when they had to call in extra staff at 11pm since the only reason I had to say no was my parents borrowed my car. And one drove me back home in the morning.

Anytime someone speaks in absolutes they clearly have a narrow perspective of reality. To base that narrow perspective on a television drama, is rather concerning.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Nov 2, 2015

Dogen - I once (many years ago) worked at a psych hospital that approached that level. One shift a coworker told the supervisor "I can't float to that unit. If I do I'll be working with my ex-husband's first wife AND his current fiancÃ©e." Said ex also worked at the facility.

At least they were exes. My colleague floated from CCU to SICU and found out that her current husband, an RT, was having an affair with a SICU nurse whose husband was a patient in the CCU. That situation sucked for a LONG time until they banned the RT from working in the ICUs. Since that adversely affected staffing, they fired the RT. The SICU nurse tried to have her lover's wife, the CCU nurse fired on some trumped up pretext of "being mean to a patient" (her husband). But that didn't fly as staffing sheets proved the CCU nurse had never taken care of or even been in the same hallway as her husband's lover's husband.

QuarterLife88, MSN, RN, NP · Nov 2, 2015

There's also a whole firefighters are usually males and nurses are usually females thing but I'm not getting into that. I'll save it for another day.

Careful, your misogyny is showing. *flames on the side of my face*

Dogen · Nov 2, 2015

Don't worry the firefighters all think your job is super easy even though they have no idea about nursing.
Color within the lines of your actual knowledge. Otherwise you draw a picture of a fool.

Hahaha... this is an excellent response. Cheers.

Trauma_drama14, BSN, MSN, RN, APRN, NP · Nov 2, 2015

I dont think all places are like that. My last unit and my unit now, we all kind of bond. My last unit, we all kinda bonded but dont see eqch other much outside of work (mostly dayshift peopl, nights was different). Ny floor now, most seem to actually bond with almost each other, even with some residents, attendings, and nps. I find it really frickin cool actually. Theyre great people and are always asking each other if they need help. Days is a bit different.

BuckyBadgerRN, ASN, RN · Nov 2, 2015

Yup. My two very best friends are married to professional FF, it is not Chicago Fire, Rescue Me, Third Watch or any other made for TV drama. I married a police officer, so the drama there is altogether a different beast, LOL

Yea partners and crews get together until they don't. Then someone sleeps with someone else's wife, or the local fire **** (woman who enjoys many partners in the same social group) wants to try sliding down all the poles in the station. Then some poor dude gets a blanket party. Alternatively you could wake up to your partner pleasuring himself on the other end of a sectional sofa while you were sleeping... And the tv is off. That's a long shift to finish out, no bond was formed. I once found an engineer tied to a backboard in the bay because he left a mess in the bathroom and the new guys finally revolted about pulling cleanup duty.
seriously if you could see the disciplinary reports I have had to sign you would not believe Chicago Fire any more than you believed ER or Grays Anatomy

OneDuckyRN · Nov 2, 2015

I think it all depends on the environment AND the people in it. If you work someplace with low turnover, the likelihood of bonding goes up.

I used to work on a unit (not as an RN) where the entire staff was close with one another, and when something happened to one of us, it was like it happened to all of us. I really miss that place.

On the other hand, I have spent the last two years working on a unit where most people start job-shopping once they hit their six months. So my two years puts me almost at the top of the seniority list. As a consequence, we're not exactly a tightly-knit group. I do work with a few people I feel pretty close to, and I would trust their judgment in any situation. Others make me absolutely crazy and I cringe when I know I have to work with them. I had been trying to work on my colleague relationships, but I've just accepted a new job and the transition is not going as smoothly as I would like. So I feel like I've had to cut my losses where my current colleagues are concerned, and am focusing on at least relating to my new ones, if not bonding with them.

la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN · Nov 2, 2015

Don't worry the firefighters all think your job is super easy even though they have no idea about nursing.
Color within the lines of your actual knowledge. Otherwise you draw a picture of a fool.

Ugh, I knew there would be flames :ahem: for that.

There's a thread in my statement that more about the fact that nurses are meant to work relatively independently in terms of patient care. Because of that, many different nurses from many different backgrounds who were taught different things are going to reach different conclusions about the same patient situation.

But, whatever, we can conclude that I only was saying in that relatively long post and firefighting is easy and nursing is hard neener neener, especially in a post starting with the premise of Chicago Fire as a rationale for an sweeping generalization. :whistling:

la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN · Nov 2, 2015

Careful, your misogyny is showing. *flames on the side of my face*

Please elaborate.

PMFB-RN, RN · Nov 3, 2015

I have been marathon watching Chicago Fire. I have always heard that fire fighters bond and become like family and so far that is what the show portrays. I am just curious, why is it that we nurses (for the most part) do not stick together and bond like most fire fighters do? I have been a nurse for 18yrs and worked in 5 different settings. I have never seen this kind of bonding in my own personal experiences. Actually it has been quite the opposite. In school they pounded it into us to CYA. I thought at the time that we were CYA to avoid lawsuits or problems with management. I never dreamed we had to protect ourselves from each other as well. I hear a lot that it is because the profession is predominately female but I am not sure I believe that. I am sorry if this has been discussed to death just point me to the previous threads and I will be on my way. If anyone cares to share their experiences and opinions about this I would be interested to read them. Thanks

I think you mean why don't FEMALE nurses bond. My experience as a male RNs is that the guys DO bond. Pretty much all of my friends are fellow male nurses (with a couple male MDs thrown in). We hunt, fish, camp and drink together. We are close and socialize together.