Bullying In Nursing

For pretty much the entire first year of my nursing career, I experienced bullying. I was mainly influenced by one person (let's call her Molly), but others were involved as well. As a brand-new nurse, you're like a deer in the headlights. Everything seems to be moving really fast around you, and you're just trying to keep your head above water and not make a mistake that harms a patient.

I had a nursing school instructor once tell me, "Students like you (referring to how easy nursing school came to me) seem to have a harder time going into the ICU. You have never had to study in school; everything comes easily to you. It won't be that way in the ICU. You won't know anything. That can be dangerous if your ego gets in the way of you learning how to be a good ICU nurse." As it turns out, I was the opposite of what he may have expected of me. I. Was. Terrified. I was scared to make a mistake, scared to unintentionally harm a patient, scared to move.

One of my first nights off from orientation, I admitted a patient who had a self-inflicted firearm wound to his chest. As I was doing my initial assessment, the patient's heart rate dropped into the 30s. It lasted maybe 1-2 seconds and then rebounded back to the 90s. I couldn't ask the patient if he felt anything because he had a breathing tube and was sedated. I took a good listen to his heart, ran a blood pressure check, and continued my assessment when everything seemed normal again. Well, about 5 minutes later, it happened again. Again, it lasted a second or two. I heard Molly in the next room, so I popped my head in and asked her to come take a look at my patient, and I told her what had happened. She wasn't in the room for more than 2 seconds before she started laughing at me and walked out of the room. She said, "The monitor isn't even working right!" I heard her go back into her patient's room, where her boyfriend (another nurse) was, and they started laughing at me. I immediately teared up because I felt stupid that I hadn't realized the EKG wires weren't all connected to the patient. Through the tears, I went into Molly's room and asked her to explain things to me next time so that I wouldn't make the same mistake again. She just laughed at me and said, "Whatever, Nora." I left the room and stayed in my patient's room for a while so I could stop crying and not be further embarrassed.

That was just one of countless times Molly teased me for not knowing things. I have always thought it's a shame that her personality is like that, because she is very smart and knowledgeable. I endured the teasing and shaming for the majority of that first year until I had finally had enough. One night, a critical patient was admitted to the unit. The patient had a seizure and coded very shortly after arriving. It was me, a nurse newer than me, and Molly. Molly was unbelievable during the code, physically pushing the new nurse out of the way, telling her she was an idiot, yelling profanities, etc. We got the patient back pretty quickly, and things calmed down. As we were all walking out of the patient's room, Molly made a comment about how the new nurse and I were f*ing idiots, and what did she ever do to have to work with us. I lost it. I yelled back at her and said, "You know what, Molly? Maybe if you would take the time to teach new nurses, not be so rude, and understand that not everyone has as much experience as you, things would be a little easier around here!"

She never said another word to me. Literally. As time has passed, and I have become an experienced nurse who precepts new nurses, I have gone out of my way to be cordial with Molly. I say hello to her, ask her how she is doing, you know, small talk. She ignores me. The most I get is a grunt and an eye roll.

The moral of this story is that no nurse, or any person for that matter, should have to endure bullying behavior. I shouldn't have gone home in tears nearly every night for the first year. And yes, I went to management multiple times about Molly. Nothing was ever done. The only thing that changed is that I decided I was done tolerating it. Stand up for yourself. Don't allow others to talk down to you. I wish I had had the strength to stand up to Molly much earlier, but maybe this story will inspire you to stand up to your bully and demand respect.