Re: why are some nurses so bitchy/
carla b wrote:I don't think its all age related but about control & power. I think that some nurses feel resentful about having been subjgated by doctors that they act out their resentments with other nurses and even patients-which is even more f*&ked up. In Maine where I relocated to from NYC the nurse supvr I ended up working for acted like she was Dr Nurse Medicine Woman-for example was sent to see a 90 yo lady with copd, dm, chf, uti's and fall risk. when I called the assist living place to let them know I was coming the mgr there told me her pulse ox was only 84 and she was having difficulty breathing. I advised them to call 911-my supvr told me that I was wrong and should have called her Dr and "tell him to order 120mg of lasix right away & really diurese her" btw lasix was not on her list of meds. when I asked my supvr why she felt I did the wrong thing she said "because we have doctor shortage here". Turns out the patient had pnemonia & was hospitalized for over a month for the infection then discharged to a snf. I later asked my spvr if directing a doctor to prescribe meds wasn't operating out of my scope of practice-I know there are regional differences but I still feel that ultimately if I had done as my supvr directed the patient would have suffered. I appreciate any one who would like to give me feedbac,
I have also had to work with nurses in all of my 20-year career as a master's level social worker. I've worked in psych hospitals, home-health, and medical hospitals. My most negative experiences with nurses have been in the psychiatric field, and have to agree that my main impressions of most nurses in that field is that they are what the negatives on this forum have said. And, not being a part of the nursing staff I've found that if one nurse gets it in for you, the whole staff more or less do the same. And, yes, they do eat their young (the nurses I've worked with), and professionals from other fields as well.
The reason? most of us in the "helping field" are attracted to this field because of our childhood experiences in growing up in dysfunctional families and are extremely co-dependent in that we are trying to "fix" someone because we can't go back and "fix" that person in our family of origin that was "broken." So, we find a field in which we can do that, as well as marrying broken people to "fix." This would all be well and good IF we'd worked on our "issues" before entering the "helping" field where we then subsequently get sucked into fights over "territory," "power struggles," "he/she is MY patient, not yours!"...........those kind of struggles. Counselors, at least, have more than just a few hours of psychology and an opportunity to work on their issues (IF they so choose) which helps negate some of the issues I've mentioned above.
There are unprofessional counselors as well as in nursing, but I just haven't found the extreme meanness, vindictiveness, "back-biting" (for want of a better word) that I've seen in the nursing field among the lower credentialed nurses. Nurses with higher levels of education seem to have less problems with this, at least in my past experiences. It's been my experience that it's the LVN's with one year of schooling who don't know enough to realize that they don't know enough.
Nurses I've worked with in the past just seem to have an overly developed sense of being "right" regardless of what they are speaking of (even if they have only a few hours in a subject or none at all), and seem surprised that there are people who have more knowledge than they do. It's dangerous to be a professional working along side a nurse who has limited knowledge: Your choices are (1) to remain silent when you see something they are doing wrong (in the psych field), (2)speak up and make an enemy (but be totally unaware that you have an enemy until the attack behind your back happens). And, because they pull so much weight, you lose, even when you are right.
And, they can literally skin you alive if you cross them. BTW, I worked just as long hours as they did. That wasn't the issue at all. It was a personality-thing. The last DON that I worked with was known throughout the unit as being brilliant, but lazy; (she and her 3 friends) flaunting of the rules that everyone else had to follow or get into trouble; got people fired or reprimanded over nothing other than she was displeased with them and would wait to find a molehill to turn into a mountain; ran around town with her friends during work hours, going shopping, taking long lunch breaks, multiple smoking breaks and then complaining of how hard she worked. She knew how to manipulate quite well, including our lesbian administrator who made so many passes at me, I grew sick.
So, yeah, my experience with nurses has been rather spotty, I would say.
I'll wait for brickbats to be thrown at me now.
I stumbled across this forum when I Googled, "bitchy nurses". I too thought I was alone. I read every comment and felt every one's pain. I too was the victim of nurse on nurse harassment and when you address the issue to higher ups...they just don't care. Why? Because it has been an on going problem and it has become the norm in the nursing field. And if anyone tells you different, they are not being honest. 
