Has anyone ever worked with a colleague who has a dominating, overbearing personality?
I am currently having issues with my colleague, or co-manager. Everytime something comes up, or a decision is made that she disagrees with, she overturns everything in her favor. Whatever she says goes, no matter what anyone else thinks.
For example, when it comes to staffing, if there is any changes that aren't according to her plan, she overrides them. Nothing you say can convince her otherwise. She always somehow manages to secure better staffing for herself, and unfortunately, the scheduler and DON seem to rule in her favor.
For instance, this afternoon, I made an attempt to switch aides between two units because we had a resident request not to work with the aide we were originally assigned. Keeping this aide on my unit meant that the nurse working on my unit would be responsible for everything having to do with this patient's care, since there was not a second nurse or aide assigned. I made arrangements for a change in assignments as I felt this was unfair to the nurse.
Unfortunately, the new, reassigned aide was not on my unit for more than 5 minutes before my colleague storms over, stating that the change in assignments cannot happen. She goes to staffing, who unfortunately sides with her and changes the assignment back. When I explain the situation, the response was that if there are really issues with the aide and the residents, a change in assignments would likely only transfer the problem over to the other side and not address the issue. They stated that if he is not performing up to standards it won't matter what unit he is on. They failed to acknowledge the lack of fairness to the assigned nurse.
Anyway, this is only one example, but I'm getting tired of the other nurse manager being favored as a result of her dominating personality. It's very frustrating that staffing works out per her preference and I'm tired of the blatant favoritism.
So, today we were scheduled to have three admits. Two of the admits were scheduled for my unit, with the third being assigned to the other unit. The other unit's admission was canceled. In an effort to balance things out, one of my admits was briefly reassigned to the other unit, so we would each get one.
For various reasons, the other manager wasn't happy about receiving an admit and protested the reassignment, even though she had more staffing on her unit. Because she was extremely upset about having an admit, I didn't even attempt to push back. We had everything under control on my unit today, so I figured we could handle two admissions. In some circumstances, I may have protested myself, but I was doing well today, so I thought it would be a good day to let the other manager have what she needed and wanted.
Davey Do
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