Why do nurses eat their young? And a couple of reasons why I think they do.
This is another installment in my nursing series of posts.
If you have never heard the expression, I will let you know what it means. Nurses eating their young refers to the animosity that older more experienced nurses give to new nurses. This can be expressed by not helping a new employee, not asking questions, or just ignoring them. This can be a new nurse as in newly graduated, or this can just be a newly hired nurse to your place of work.
So why does this happen? I think that it happens for a couple of different reasons.
New Nurses, New Ideas
I think people, in general, enjoy routine and predictability. New
nurses effect this by just being present. If they are newly graduated they often bring new ideas about how to do things. Often times these are the new standard of operation that experienced nurses might not be aware of. If management agrees with these ideas, you might be looking at new policies and procedures. Which depending on the circumstance can be fought against.
New Nurse, New Friends
A new nurse to this team means that there is another person here. Maybe other
nurses feel that they will lose status or the friendship they have developed. They feel that they will lose the bond that their team already has and a new nurse jeopardizes this.
Turnover
Sometimes places of employment have a lot of hiring, firing, and quitting, for whatever reason. This means that there is a lot of new faces all the time, oftentimes it means that there is not good management or that people are overworked and underpaid. Ultimately training or questions are other things that this person has to add to their plate when they already feel stretched. They can also feel defeated when they train multiple people and they don’t stay.
Personality
Sometimes it has nothing to really do with any outside influence other than that person’s personality. I am talking about the nurses who are seasoned and hardened. They often look like they are mad at the world. This is because they just have seen too many things to be soft and squishy. These people often times I refer to as having a hard chocolate outer shell and a soft gooey inside. They really do care, and really love what they do.
Patience
A lot of people who train new
nurses are not exactly teachers of the year. They are usually people who are experienced in what they do and/or are just willing to train new people. Teaching is an art in itself, nurses generally only have the training of patient teaching. This means that they might not be apt in teaching at all.
The offending trait is patience. Teaching requires a lot of patience, at no fault of the new
nurses. People who learn by doing generally have to be followed and monitored while doing whatever task. To catch the mistakes and fix them. This requires patience because they might do it more than once. Sometimes people need to be taught things in multiple different ways before they understand something, once again requiring patience. They say it’s a virtue and it really is in this setting.
In the End
All of these things because they are out of the control of the new
nurse. All of these things have more to do with the other people around them or the person who is training them, then any action they have actually done. A lot of these traits fade over time. As the new nurse becomes an experienced nurse. You just have to survive the beginning to get to that part. I know this because I have experienced a lot of these things in my career.
It is not a good experience but it really helps me to realize that all of these things are not about me. Not because I can’t understand a concept instantly, or that my personality is offensive. It has always been more to do with them than it does me. As long as I try my best to make a good working environment and look at my part in situations that is all I can do. I also always keep in mind what it feels like to be a new nurse. If I keep those experiences close to my heart, I won’t make the same mistakes that were done to me.
So, if you are in this situation as well, just hang in there. Give it a few months and see how it goes. Find a couple of people who are supportive of you and hang around them. If you have to get your supervisors and management involved. Hopefully knowing what might be motivating these actions will be helpful to you.
If you are a nurse tell me your experiences about being a new
nurse, were you eaten alive? How did you deal with it? Any other questions, comments, or concerns let me know!
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
