Study up. If they’re condescending, chances are they’re lazy and/or covering for a weakness. Study up. Read all their documentation. Take note of things they -didn’t- document. Try to understand their documentation better than they do. When you find a weakness to exploit, be ruthless and link their weakness to sub-optimal patient care outcomes.
It’s stupidly easy to hang anyone in this line of work, which is why it’s extra-important that we’re all nice to each other 😉
Any of us can make a mistake, we only get thrown under the bus when we’re unpopular. Asking questions and adopting the student role is an extremely effective method for bypassing people’s natural skepticism. If Nurse X is condescending to you, maybe ask Nurse Y “I noticed Nurse X did this, but I see Nurse Z do it that way. Which one is right?” Make sure you pick an example where Nurse X did something blatantly wrong and innocently bring it up as if you’re genuinely confused. You’d be surprised how effective this can be at poisoning people’s attitudes towards Nurse X.
These are only brief examples, and a truly successful campaign must include a variety of tactics and strategies that will change over the course of weeks or months. Persist, however, and victory will be yours. Remember that it’s important to be outwardly kind, helpful, and accommodating at ALL TIMES to EVERYONE, or else you will compromise your efforts.
If some of these concepts are new to you, browse through “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu and “The Prince” by Machiavelli (who also wrote a lesser-known book called “The Art of War” that’s worth looking into).
This can be a cut-throat business, especially in milieus with weak leadership. If you notice a lot of catty in-fighting, you’re probably working somewhere with weak leadership. This means you have two reasonable choices. Find another job, or politic your way into a leadership position and do the job better than them. The second option, while rewarding and entertaining, will thrust you into many conflicts that will challenge your grace and intellect.
So your successful campaign, resulting in victory for you, is to discredit the charge nurse?
Sounds like alot of sneaky manuevering,plotting and planning to me, which isn’t professional behavior either. My advice is to evaluate the power structure while documenting everything. If there is a realistic chance that you can effect change by complaining about the charge nurse’s behavior, then it’s worth pursuing. If the charge nurse is the nrse mgr’s best friend, relative, etc, either suck it up or transfer.
just think of it as dealing with a difficult person.sometimes you need to pick your battles.another approach is to try to use your diplomatic tact.it is a power struggle.don’t give the other person “power” over you.
For example, you have an older, more experienced charge nurse that is easily threatened by suggestions.Bring the subject up, let them make suggestions,etc.You will gain the art of making people that are insecure, think the idea came from them.When actually, you introduced the idea.
We used to call it a win-win situation.In the new dawn of emails, facebook and texting people have lost the art of problem solving through conversation and listening.Practice this lost nursing skill!
to her , I am not a NEW nurse, just new to here! If you don’t like to orient than we are even, I don’t like to be orineted, and if you like I can take half of the load now! After that week of fun ( I acctually liked her from then on), we made an agreement that if we got new nurses I would be the orienter not her, I don’t like the new nurses feeling so anxious and out of place, its a hard job to begin with without the negativities added on by each other.GD Star Ratingloading…
July 17th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Study up. If they’re condescending, chances are they’re lazy and/or covering for a weakness. Study up. Read all their documentation. Take note of things they -didn’t- document. Try to understand their documentation better than they do. When you find a weakness to exploit, be ruthless and link their weakness to sub-optimal patient care outcomes.
It’s stupidly easy to hang anyone in this line of work, which is why it’s extra-important that we’re all nice to each other 😉
Any of us can make a mistake, we only get thrown under the bus when we’re unpopular. Asking questions and adopting the student role is an extremely effective method for bypassing people’s natural skepticism. If Nurse X is condescending to you, maybe ask Nurse Y “I noticed Nurse X did this, but I see Nurse Z do it that way. Which one is right?” Make sure you pick an example where Nurse X did something blatantly wrong and innocently bring it up as if you’re genuinely confused. You’d be surprised how effective this can be at poisoning people’s attitudes towards Nurse X.
These are only brief examples, and a truly successful campaign must include a variety of tactics and strategies that will change over the course of weeks or months. Persist, however, and victory will be yours. Remember that it’s important to be outwardly kind, helpful, and accommodating at ALL TIMES to EVERYONE, or else you will compromise your efforts.
If some of these concepts are new to you, browse through “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu and “The Prince” by Machiavelli (who also wrote a lesser-known book called “The Art of War” that’s worth looking into).
This can be a cut-throat business, especially in milieus with weak leadership. If you notice a lot of catty in-fighting, you’re probably working somewhere with weak leadership. This means you have two reasonable choices. Find another job, or politic your way into a leadership position and do the job better than them. The second option, while rewarding and entertaining, will thrust you into many conflicts that will challenge your grace and intellect.
October 11th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
So your successful campaign, resulting in victory for you, is to discredit the charge nurse?
Sounds like alot of sneaky manuevering,plotting and planning to me, which isn’t professional behavior either. My advice is to evaluate the power structure while documenting everything. If there is a realistic chance that you can effect change by complaining about the charge nurse’s behavior, then it’s worth pursuing. If the charge nurse is the nrse mgr’s best friend, relative, etc, either suck it up or transfer.
February 23rd, 2012 at 8:29 pm
how about a little ethics around here
February 24th, 2012 at 12:22 am
just think of it as dealing with a difficult person.sometimes you need to pick your battles.another approach is to try to use your diplomatic tact.it is a power struggle.don’t give the other person “power” over you.
For example, you have an older, more experienced charge nurse that is easily threatened by suggestions.Bring the subject up, let them make suggestions,etc.You will gain the art of making people that are insecure, think the idea came from them.When actually, you introduced the idea.
We used to call it a win-win situation.In the new dawn of emails, facebook and texting people have lost the art of problem solving through conversation and listening.Practice this lost nursing skill!
August 30th, 2012 at 7:16 am
to her , I am not a NEW nurse, just new to here! If you don’t like to orient than we are even, I don’t like to be orineted, and if you like I can take half of the load now! After that week of fun ( I acctually liked her from then on), we made an agreement that if we got new nurses I would be the orienter not her, I don’t like the new nurses feeling so anxious and out of place, its a hard job to begin with without the negativities added on by each other.GD Star Ratingloading…