Disappointed.

Right now, I work once a week in the ED as an ED Tech. The same place where I worked full-time this summer. I still work there once a week so that, when I graduate, I am already streamlined into a job; already in the books and getting paychecks.

So Tuesday night, I was working my usual 3:30-12:00 and . . . let me give some back-story first.

There is a nurse in the ED whom I have worked with on several occasions. She is relatively young and, like me, she is a second degree nurse (had a Bachelor’s in another field). First off, I feel a sense of camaraderie with second degree nurses because it means that you REALLY wanted to be a nurse. Of course, many first-degree nurses do as well, but there is a growing club of second-degree nurses and, a lot of the time, you can pick them out of a crowd of nurses. Being a second-degree nurse means you already had a degree and career, and you thought, “Hey, I want to take care of people when they are sick or I want to help healthy people remain that way or I love babies being born [in my case]. Let me go back to school and bust my ass in order to someday take care of others.” Soo. . . . . Right, this nurse in this story is a second-degree nurse and that peaked my interest in her.

In addition, I really respected her as a nurse; she’s smart and organized and treats her patients well. I knew she was not the most amiable person; many of the other nurses dislike her “attitude,” but, I had never received any of her unpleasantness, so I was in the dark on that one. Plus, she is interested in international health work and that is a HUGE plus in my book.

Until the other night.

More background: I was VERY tired the other night during my shift. I had been up since 6:45AM, at my clinical for school, and was somewhat dreading my 3:30-12 shift. I was moving slowly. I probably looked a little disheveled and felt like I was swimming through syrup. BUT, I was helping out, just like I’m supposed to. Doing ECG’s, drawing some bloods, moving beds/patients, cleaning, etc.

First, she commented [in a totally condescending tone]: “When you work here, you better run. I mean, you have to RUN when you’re a nurse here. . .blah, blah.”

The implication was: You can’t even keep up now. How are you going to keep up when you’re a nurse? Quit now useless girl.

Ok, so that was not the meanest. But, it was unnecessary. I have been working there 7 months. I know that the nurses have to “run.” I know that the job is really, really hard.

Then, in a quiet moment (very rare for the ED), I sat down to check my email, for about 2 minutes. I was just checking to see if someone in particular had written me and then I was going to go back to work. Mind you, in other rare quiet moments, I have seen nurses huddled around the computer, looking at pictures of grandkids and the doctors check their email all the time when they have a free second. So this was a benign act on my part and no one needed an ECG right at that second. AND! If they had, I, of course, would have dropped what I was doing and rushed over.

So. She sidles up next to me and says [again, the condescension was wafting thickly], “Tell me you’re kidding! Please tell me you are joking. I mean, come on!!! Tell me you don’t have something better to do. . . I’m just going to assume you are joking here and you are not checking your email. Don’t you have something to do?”

She left me totally dumbfounded, I couldn’t even reply. I just clicked out of my email and walked away. It all sounds so minor, but what really got me was this: she made me feel utterly worthless. How dare someone make me feel like I am 16 again and totally useless. I’m not a nurse yet, I know. But I’m an adult and a colleague and won’t be treated like an underling.

She was someone I respected and looked up to, in a professional sense. And now she has joined the ranks of nurses who want to “Eat their young.”

Where are the mentors and nurses who want to offer guidance?

I’m pretty depressed.