Why nurses treat nurses so badly.

[SuzieVN]

Is it because nursing is female dominated* ?

*Female dominated field would also mean that nurses have a lot of coping issues- single mothers, child care, financial pressures, etc.

Is it an anger issue- do people with anger issues gravitate towards becoming a nurse, maybe because they seek to control others?

Is it envy based- "Suzy is a better nurse than I am, I'll show HER a thing or two!"?

I'd like to know what causes this destructive and 'constanty' posed question. . .

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

You're assuming that nurses DO treat other nurses badly, and I have not found that to be the case. So perhaps the real question is "Why are nurses treating ME badly?"

What causes this destructive and constantly posed question? Perhaps it's new nurses who are working at real jobs for the first time, and perhaps encountering negative feedback for the first time. Perhaps it's overstressed nurses overreacting to every perceived slight. Perhaps it's nurses who have not realized that everything is NOT all about them, and when Susie fails to greet them effusively every morning, it could be because Susie hasn't put her contacts in yet and didn't recognize them and NOT because Susie hates them. Perhaps it's people who just need to grow up taking every encounter too personally.

[SaoirseRN]

I sometimes wonder if it isn't just those one or two individuals, who would act the same no matter what their career choice, that give the rest of us a bad reputation? A new nurse encounters that I person, remembers "nurses eat their young" and decides they have been eaten. Those few people can be a real problem, agreed, but it doesn't mean we are all out to get new nurses.

I also agree with a previous poster that sometimes it's the perception of the new nurse themselves. Depending on many factors, some people are more shocked by reality than others. Sometimes they see constructive criticism / feedback / advice as their coworkers berating or bullying them, when in reality they have seen a real problem and want to help correct it.

[anotherone, BSN, RN]

a lot of victim mentality types and paranoid people. crabs in a barrel. everything is some offense or slight. eventually most people adapt and become the same way. Also a stressful environment puts them over the edge. always trying to one up each other.

[SweettartRN]

One only needs to see some of the comments left here for fellow nurses to begin analyzing that one. Hormones? Plenty. Ingorance? Plenty. Stress? Plenty.

Forgetting that we haven't walked in the other person's shoes? This seems to be forgotten on an hourly basis.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

What constitutes "treating another nurse badly"? Often, you have to be direct and some people just don't react well to anything less than stellar feedback or constructive criticism. Is it "treating another nurse poorly" if you catch an error and point it out to her during report? Because many of the "nurses eat their young" threads call attention to things like this and don't say anything about nurses actually treating each other poorly.