To be put off nursing because of the 'bitchiness'

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Not my words but those of people I know who either still are or who have been and then left.

I'd love to do this but the thought of this really puts me off. Anyone who does nursing have you found it's a particular difficult environment for this sort of thing?

One of my best friends qualified a couple of years ago and said it's very cliquey and bullying / nastiness between colleagues seems to be rife. She's leaving and has said most people she qualified with have left too for a mix of reasons, this being one of them.

I'm a solicitor myself but have been wanting a career change and have always wanted to do this but it never worked out. I can take crap from the public, but I don't think I'd cope well with it from colleagues.

Oh fuck yes! Don't even ask me about 3 primary schools I know well (BFs school/ SIL's school and my son's school) where over the past 2 years men have all become head teachers and have, to varying degrees, destroyed good schools/ destroyed the culture/ warmth there. It makes my blood boil.

Wards are very bitchy and if you don’t join in, you become the target. Full on bullying is common on wards too.

it’s not as bad in the community but it still happens

Ive worked as a nurse for 15 years now in several acute care environmenta and woukd t say this has ever been my experience. Maybe ive been lucky but on the whole I’ve found nurses to be generally supportive of eachother. A bit cliquey on ICU because I was a little old to fit in with the young crowd who
went out drinking a lot and not been there long enough to fit in with the long-timer mummy crowd, but not bitchy as such. But the beauty with nursing is you have options. if you don’t like a student placement you wont be there too ling and if you don’t like a qualified job you can fairly easily move on because there are vacancies everywhere.

I’m a nurse and am very proud of my job. When I was younger I did notice some cliquey-ness (usually in areas dominated by young people like A&E and ITU- it wasn’t bitchiness but more some became v close and others who had different interests were ‘left out’. However I haven’t really noticed any bitchiness since then especially as I’ve been in smaller teams. Generally people are incredibly kind and supportive in very very challenging situations.
I now work in nurse education and I’m always very honest with potential nurses about how hard and exhausting (mentally and physically) the job is. I don’t know if I’d do it again especially as a massive bonus was no fees and now nurses come out with huge debt. It’s a shame.

I work in a lovely team, we all get on. Out of the 20 years I’ve been qualified I’ve worked on two cliquey wards. One particularly didn’t like anyone who was from the ‘outside’. But as more people came in this did improve.

Other than that the wards I’ve worked on have been lovely and I’ve made some amazing friends over the years. Nursing friends really can be the best.

I think it’s similar to any work place, you get a combination of people. When I was on the wards there were 3 nurses in particular who were nasty about the nursing team management, I was one of the management team! But it was dealt with. The rest of the nurses were lovely and caring.
The second team I worked in there wasn’t any nastiness, but the senior nurse was totally unsupportive and uncaring.
The team I work with now are small, but the most caring kindest people you could wish to work with.
As pp have said try some work as an HCA and try a bit of agency as the mix of staff and support can be quite different in different areas. If you find the right environment for you, nursing will always be hard work, but can also be incredibly rewarding.

On the whole, MH tends to have much more black humour and camaraderie.

Not a nurse, but I did ODP training. I witnessed some awful bullying amongst staff. I did even report it to my mentor and she said "it is just banter".
There is a saying that "nurses eat their young", and that was something I also experienced.

I am still in touch with a lot of my old uni cohort. About half have now left healthcare altogether, many citing bitchiness and bullying.

If you feel like nursing (or any career in healthcare) is your calling, then go for it. But please make sure you have an absolute solid support network around during your training, as you will need it.

It’s not bitchy colleagues that are the problem. It’s the unrelenting workload, shifts and management who don’t care about you and would replace you in a heartbeat if you dropped dead… run for the hills, don’t consider nursing unless your a gluten for punishment. I don’t think I have one colleague or friend that genuinely happy in their nursing job…

In all three hospitals that I have worked in recently the nurses have been amazing kind people. It has honestly been like having a work family.
please don’t be a nurse though conditions and pay are dire!

I never knew that this was said about nursing!!
I first experienced bullying on my very first placement as a student nurse, but thankfully stuck it out and didn’t encounter anything quite that bad again… until I qualified, and I’m sad to say that I have now left nursing after many years. Not directly due to bullying and cliqueyness, but I am not prepared to work in such a tough job without being supported, or at the very least, not bitched about by my colleagues. I made some amazing friends in nursing, but they can’t shield you from the crap you get from others.

nurses eat their young

YANBU. You can't say anything negative about nurses on here as apparently they're all perfect (to some,) but I have heard the same. I have known several young women train as nurses, and bitterly regret it as the workplace is toxic (because of difficult colleagues.)

Some claim it's the workload/hours/difficult patients etc who put them off their job, but it's the toxic and bitchy environment they're in that is the main reason for some nurses unhappiness and wanting to leave. There are some lovely nurses, but there are some that are ANYTHING but 'lovely.' And working alongside these women is very hard.

@WhileMyGuitarGentlyWeeps 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 hit the nail on the head there for sure

They absolutely do!

I think the people who never experienced it had a face that fit. Or if they never saw it amongst their peers, probably didn't see the signs of it in any victims.
Easy to dismiss a newly qualified nurse or student as weird if they sit in silence in the rest room, or they keep hiding in the loo. They are more than likely being bullied from someone.

😘

Op don't let the awful sexist comments on this thread (the irony eh!) put you off.

Nursing is an excellent career and if you find the right environment your colleagues will become your family.

Ignore the nurses eat their young rubbish, never heard that in my life

Yes. There are awful nurses and toxic work environments, I'm sure there are awful solicitors and toxic work environments for them too. But there are also (a majority imo) excellent nurses and work environments who are doing their best in pretty dire circumstances.

Not everyone is cut out for the job though. Maybe that is part of the problem

Especially now. Its 100x harder than it was amd it was almost impossibly hard to start with

I'd really think hard about it being the right choice for you. Do some research (not on mumsnet)

Oh god I didn’t realise this. My Dd has had a tough couple of years with mental health struggles and been on the paed ward a lot. Now starting a BTEc to train as a nurse. It has been a real goal for her to focus on. Is it really that bad?

I've worked in hospitals for 20 years and never found this. Ward teams are always friendly and lovely. You'll always get the odd stroppy, stressed person in the mix somewhere though.

I would also recommend looking at AHP roles - much more autonomy and career development with a much more defined role. I get to travel around the hospital and have a lot more connections across different teams but my AHP family are my team.

I've found that the staff in Mental Health and Learning Disabilities are so much more welcoming than in some other areas. Very very passionate about some of the lower profile services, and also very accepting that people come in all different types of personalities rather than one "ward style" of fit in or flounder. I think sometimes they're the areas you get drawn to if you enjoy unpicking more complicated people as well (that's why I love those areas of SLT).

You tend to get certain personality types clustering around certain types of service though - we joke about it with SLT - that paeds SALTs tend to have a certain "look" about them and so on! (They're lovely but do tend to have the Cbeebies presenter vibe about them)

Hmmm... I don't think its particularly bitchy for me now but then I have no experiences of any other work place. I qualified at 20 and I'm 31 now. Been a band 7 since I was 26 and yes a lot of older nurses have been a bit bitter of this really through sheer jealousy but I honestly don't care. Staff nurse ward work was not for me, hated it. I think you have to progress as quick as possible in nursing and preferably escape secondary care. I now work autonomously and not in a team so bitchiness isn't an issue for me. Going from a solicitor to a nurse is honestly utter madness. If you must then you should try and progress ANP route , nurse specialist etc as quick as possible to escape the ward bitchiness and just the mundaneness of nursing in general.

Nurses eat their young, OP.

Ignore the nurses eat their young rubbish, never heard that in my life

That is a pretty unfair and invalidating thing to say... especially when several people in this thread have experienced it.

It is not a huge stretch to wonder that you may be one of those nurses if you think it is not a thing. No one admits to being a bitch.

@XenoBitch I was thinking the same thing. The people who always claim not to notice bullying are usually the ones doing it.

@XenoBitch @differential so true.
I have a few of the bullies during my training tagged in some posts on FB being quoted as a lovely nurse/great friend/person and I'm thinking "are you having a laugh?! She's a demon towards SN and some vulnerable patients" 🙄