Nurses speak to me like crap

[alicewithnohumps]

I recently started a new job as a HCA and I find that a lot of the nurses are quite rude and really short with me....it's beginning to get me down now. One nurse today is usually quite chatty with everyone but today has given me very one word answers then spun her chair around and continued her day. Maybe I'm just being over sensitive but has anyone else had this?

There are rude people everywhere unfortunately. It's best just to stay friendly. Keep yourself professional and remember you are a great person. You're there for your patients. Dont let anyone get you down.

Do other HCA,s feel the same? If so maybe worth talking to your line manager. Just because someone is busy doens,t mean they have to be disrespectful.

What does that mean? What do you think is rude? And it seems slightly odd that EVERY nurse treats you badly. Could there be a reason?

I've found that hospitals are very hierarchichal places. I'm not at all surprised by what you say. Sadly my only advice would be to do your job and ignore it, because you won't change it.

Sorry you are going through this. There is a lot of band snobbery in the NHS. It's so bad that you will often be asked your band before your name (in my experience).

It's so odd I have never worked anywhere where I felt so little and invisible. It makes my 12 hour shifts incredibly lonely

Don't know if this helps OP but I think patients really appreciate the work you do, I know I do. It's probably not the same as connecting with colleagues though if you don't see the same patients all the time.

If you're in the NHS, speak to your supervisor/mentor and ask for feedback. Find out if there's anything about your performance that is a cause for concern. Maybe you're just unlucky enough to work in a really cliquey place, in which case, grit your teeth, get the experience under your belt and move on to pastures new. Good HCAs are worth their weight in gold, please don't give up because of this negative experience.

I'm sorry this is happening.

I'm not a nurse but a coal-face HCP in another role, and I'm a Band 6. We are very reliant on our Band 2 and 3 HCAs so wouldn't dream of treating them badly! We are a team.

I agree, the NHS is very hierarchical, but that shouldn't permit anyone to be rude to anyone else.

Speak to the nurse's line manager.

We should all be pulling on the same rope, here!

I had my appraisal and got nothing but positive feedback we hand out feedback forms to patients and Iv been mentioned on a couple of them on how helpful I am. I just feel really unwelcome at the nurses station and don't know where to place myself

Sounds like they are jealous. Would you consider working on another ward or in the community? You may have a better experience

I don't think it's uncommon. Is the ward short staffed? I don't think that helps.

I was talking to an HCA a while ago who was previously a qualified nurse. She said exactly the same thing. Had been planning to return to nursing but was having second thoughts due to the hierarchy bullshit.

Savanna Why would a Band 5 or 6 nurse feel 'jealous' of a HCA? Really? I don't get it.

I'm top of Band 6, that's about £19 an hour. I frequently help our HCAs decipher the hieroglyphics of their payslips. To try and make sure they're being properly paid.

I'm not 'jealous' of their £9.50 ph

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I used to be a HCA (I lasted a year) and found the same. Some nurses (especially the more senior ones) treated you like crap and thought you were a brain dead idiot. I remember telling one that a patient looked unwell, and she actually said to me "What do you know?". Anyway, that patient was really quite unwell as it turned out. But that was really the straw that made me make the decision to leave HCA work. I'm in NHS admin now. Much better. Still bullshit and crap pay but at least my colleagues speak to me nicely.
I was doing bank work at that time, so it wasn't even one ward or department. I worked in them all and got treated like shit everywhere.

(The patient above in my story ended up being OK, BTW! The doctors saw them on ward rounds and sorted them out. I can't go into details obviously but it was something that a quick treatment would sort out)

Judging by people's responses I get the impression it won't get any better. One sister in particular will not speak to me directly and often speaks to the person next to me and says "she can do that" referring to me. She never addresses me by my name and I know she knows it because her daughter has the same name and she has used it when discussing who is on duty and stuff. I am not one for sitting around I never have been but I physically can't dreAm jobs up all the time and sometimes it's very rare but there is literally nothing to do I find myself watching the patients to see if they have put their cup down so I can clear it away. I can't keep lingering around people's bedsides and cleaning things repeatedly for the sake of it. A member of staff came to cover a shift from another ward last week and actually gave me a hand doing a couple of beds because it was manic and she made a comment "does nobody ever give you a hand?" I looked shocked and she said "are they incapable of making a bed?" I got the impression it may be different on her ward

I'm a newly qualified nurse and it sounds like a particularly poor culture on your ward to be honest. I've seen it happen a lot and its ridiculous because we have pretty much all had the same attitude ourselves during our training and probably all vowed to never treat anyone like that.
I would say keep yourself busy but visible. I would always find a job to do, restocking etc but that does come with time. It is frustrating when your room/side is mental and there are people standing about chatting at the nurses station.

Do not take your moving and handling training for granted to keep the peace with other nurses. You should not be doing beds on your own and don't do washes on your own if the patient requires 2.

Please dont leave..the NHS needs great HCAs. Keep your head down and listen out for other wards you could maybe move to. I worked at a hospice with the best HCA's who were an amazing little team on their own and an absolute asset to the team as a whole. They were respected completely by nursing and medical staff so there are places with much better cultures than you have experienced so far.

Unfortunately in all walks of life you get people who have a view of self importance, this goes with the hierarchical aspect often see in hospitals.
I nursed for 35 years and hope I never treated any of my colleagues like this but did come across it. However I found that nurses who act like this are insecure in their own role.
However having said that you don’t have to put up with it ask for a transfer where you will be treated with the respect you deserve.

My daughter is also a hca, she's had some hard times on a ward she worked on. It was making her physically ill . I kept telling her to report it but she didn't know who to as it was the manager who was a bitch. Manager has got form apparently. Daughter has now gone back into the bank and is a a lot happier.
Ive worked in the nhs for 15 years. Everyone that I started with has left and a new breed has turned up. And yes some of them do look down on hca, it's sad as the hca run the wards. I always thank mine at the end of the shift and see if anything they want to talk about. I'm not even qualified yet but I understand how it is on the 'other side'.

Sadly, you will always get people who are defined by their jobs and think they walk on a higher ground because of their job.
Move.
Schools are very similar. Support staff can be seen as the lowest of the low but not all schools are the same. I'm sure hospitals will be similar, good and bad work culture.

I'm surprised that you say there are times when you have nothing to do. Reading between the lines it could be that the nurses are extremely busy but you want to spend time chatting.
I think you should cut down on the chat and make yourself busy. What is your actual role? Having spent lots of time on a few different wards with my DF and MIL, I know staff are always runnoff their feet. When they are sat at the nurses station (or whatever it's called) they are generally catching up on paperwork. Yes they may also be chatting, but they are working at the same time. If you're stood there just chatting it could be very annoying.

I work in the community as band 2 admin and when i first started a couple of nurses reduced me to tears! I think i did have bad pmt at the time which exacerbated it but even so there was no need to talk to me like they did. I had had no induction into the area and was new to the nhs and had no idea what was expected. Now i have settled in well and feel much happier. I'd say that as an admin it's easy to be forgotten and you tend to be treated as a dogs body by some. It's very clicky too. I thought i'd never fit in and i was really stressed. But now i've found you just have to be consistently efficient, friendly and an all-round nice guy to be accepted into the throng! Jump when told, that kind of thing! Wave goodbye to your self-respect.. i'm kidding!

Yes I'm new and never worked in the NHS and when it's busy obviously I'm busy but for example I have just come off a night shift from 12am we have had no patients. I cleaned everything and finished my jobs by 4am so at that point I went to the nurses station and they were sat having a brew so I grabbed my water bottle and no sooner had I swallowed my water I got "has the fridge and microwave been done you might want to go and check" so I told them yes they have been done so then one suggested I input some surveys into the computer so I explained I haven't been shown yet but if you can point me in the right direction I will do them to that I got "I'll go through that another time with you, can you fill the water jugs?" So I told her I had just put them through the dishwasher whilst we had no patients and then I got "we could probably do with some new mop heads"

I don't think I'm being sensitive but I purposely made myself busy tonight because of my last shift and I just don't feel welcome at all.

It's not so much what they say it's more the tone, never a please or Thankyou. There's 2 ladies I really like and they are sisters and both so lovely I just pray I'm on a shift with them soon. Manners go a long way and it's just ignorant