Hazed and abused

For ENA Connection, the monthly magazine of Emergency Nurses Association

Nurses say the way to stop bullying in the ED is to get away from the new-nurse hazing mentality.

By Shelly Strom, ENA Connection Contributor

Just six months into her first job as a nurse, Kelsea Bice, MSN, RN, CEN, TCRN, had an experience that nearly ended her career. Bice questioned her fitness for the occupation after her boss told her that one day she’d end up killing a patient.

"Here I was, this brand-new nurse, trying to figure it all out, and hearing that sent me into a depressed spiral," said Bice, who chairs ENA’s Emerging Professional Advisory Council. "It was heartbreaking, and I almost left nursing because of it."

A few months later, a colleague bullied Bice for declining to work past the end of a 12-hour shift. Bice reported it to her boss, who dismissed her account of the exchange as a cultural misunderstanding. The situation drove Bice to get a job elsewhere.

Finding nurses with similar stories is not difficult. Often they’re chalked up to what one nurse called "nurses eating their young," a mentality that for 40 years or more has been accepted as part of the "initiation" of new nurses. See the article on ENA’s site. To read the entire text, please contact me.