Experiencing bullying from staff nurse
Pretty much exactly what the title says. I’m at a small critical access hospital, small ER and small Med-surg floor. My role is as a supervisor between the two floors, basically just ask around if they need help and deal with any issues that come up, I’m normally an ER nurse but they filled the ER nurse role and needed this role filled and they were ok training me so I happily accepted.
I’ve been doing the job about 2 months and just extended until end of August, the job is easy and most people very nice and welcoming; except for this one staff nurse in the ER. They’re older probably 50-60s and is one of those people who just needs to fill any silence there is, her opinion always matters more, her life is so much better then everyone else’s, her kids are more accomplished etc etc. I’ve dealt with these kinds of people and I’m fine to just let them talk and I’ll do a polite “oh that’s cool” every now and then but there’s not much of a real conversation beyond that.
For the first month this was fine with her, she ranted and I just kinda sat and listened and nodded along, but the past month I’ve noticed a shift in the way she speaks to me. If I disagree with something or I try to discus patient care, she will flip like a switch and start targeting me in an aggressive and mean way.
For example; I had just come over briefly to hang the new scheduale while she was in another room. The doctor came out of a room and asked me “is her penicillin allergy documented? Because she’s having a reaction to the antibiotic”. I didn’t know because I had just walked over, so I went to check, sure enough it wasn’t so I fixed it in the chart. The nurse came out of the room she was in and asked the doctor what was going on, “I was just asking writer to change the allergy in the chart”. She started mumbling really loud in a way that I was obviously meant to hear “I was going to change it, but I guess I don’t have to now since someone keeps poking around in my chart. I’ve been a nurse for X amount of years you would think I’m capable of taking care of something so simple, but I guess I’m so stupid someone has to keep shoving their nose in my chart.” This kept going on until I just said “I didn’t know, I just walked over here and he asked me to change it, I didn’t know you were going to do it”. She took this as an excuse to start directly talking to me “oh no you think you can just walk over here and do whatever, that’s fine it’s not like I’ve been here for X amount of years, there’s no reason for you to poke around in other peoples charts. I’ve been a nurse for X amount of years I know what I’m doing, you have no reason to step in”. At this point I left the room because I was upset and nothing productive was going to happen.
There’s been several instances like this which makes working with her unbearable. I frankly don’t care if she likes me or not, or why she doesn’t like me; but I do need to be able to work with her, and she is making it impossible. I’ve talked to the manager and he said he would speak with her, but is this something worth mentioning to my recruiter? If it’s going to be like this for the next 3 months I think I would rather cancel my extension and look for a new contract. I have enough months saved up where I can take some time off so the money isn’t a concern, but I do enjoy this contract and would rather not cancel if it can be worked out.
Is there any way to deal with this, has anyone experienced anything similar?