Nora

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...

It was a Saturday night, and I was told that I was getting an admission from the emergency room. I started looking up the patient's chart and saw that he was there for alcohol withdrawal. The patient was young, in his 30s. Soon after that, the phone rang, and I received the official report from the ED RN. The patient arrived at the ICU about 20 minutes later. He did not have any family with him, which would make completing the admission assessment documentation difficult, given that he was...