Professional Cannibalism
A co-worker of mine recently re-posted (on facebook) an article by Nurse Gail about Bullying in my profession. I find this phenomenon fascinating and I've discussed it with several of my colleagues. It seems so out of place in a caring profession, but I assure you - it's a real thing. A real and embarrassing thing.
In my fourth year of nursing school, I desperately wanted to be a labour and delivery Nurse. I had requested that my final clinical rotation be in a labour and delivery unit, and my school found a way to make that happen for me. I went out of province to a unit that was of moderate size, and that had a fairly large staff. At this particular hospital, Nurses who had a degree (a BN or BScN) were paid a bit more than Nurses who didn't have a degree. I was a student enrolled in a BScN program working with a group of nurses who by-and-large did not have degrees and were not at all impressed with the pay difference. This is where I was when I first learned the expression "Nurses eat their young". It was a pretty distressing time for me, but fortunately I had an incredibly supportive faculty adviser at my school and she encouraged me to stick it out and to use the experience to learn what kind of Nurse I wanted to be. I used it as a learning tool and my final paper for my final clinical rotation was about bullying in the profession. It turned into a great experience and I will forever be sympathetic to those poor vulnerable student Nurses.
Since then, I've been pretty fortunate not to have had a lot of personal experience being bullied, but I've worked in 4 different places since graduating and I have yet to work in a place where I haven't seen SOME degree of horizontal violence among Nurses. The most common that I've seen is gossip - for which I'm completely embarrassed to admit I'm guilty of. It could almost seem harmless if I didn't know better, but I do know better, which is why this is so shameful. When we gossip we cause harm. Even if the gossipee never knows what was said (although I think it usually gets back to them), it shapes people's opinions about them (and about the gossiper) in an unfair way.
Although I think it's terrible that there is so much of this in the Nursing profession, I don't think I have the energy or skill-set to tackle it large-scale, so I'm just going to do what I can in my small corner of the world. I so admire the people in my life who I never hear engaging in gossip/slander, and I'm going to set my mind to being one of those people. I'm sure it can only lead to good things, so please - wish me luck!
Week's Review
The last several days I've been suffering from a sore neck/shoulder that's limiting the range of motion of my entire upper body - particularly my left arm, and leaving me feeling kind of grumpy. Fortunately I've still managed to get some crafting done.
I finished the second (of four) spindles of my "Light my Fire" superwash merino/tencel blend that I got at the Maritime Spinners Retreat this past fall. I'm spinning it as sport weight singles and it's coming out GORGEOUS! It's just lovely to spin! Unfortunately I'm going to have to take a break from it since it's seriously aggravating my neck pain. I thought about spinning it on my wheel, but I'd really like to keep it consistent, plus I'm really enjoying spindling this! If anyone is interested, the brand is Waterloo Wools and I got it from a vendor called The Bobbin Tree, based out of Sydney, Nova Scotia.
I've made progress on my mum's "Ease", and then un-made the progress... or made un-progress. I wasn't paying attention to the pattern and knit too many raglan increases, so I had the new experience of unraveling several rounds in the widest part of my sweater and picking up a few hundred stitches. I was anxious, so I waited until after a few drinks when I felt pretty jolly about the whole thing. It went off without a hitch! I can't wait until my next big mistake!!
I'm back to working on my "Owls" now that my yarn finally arrived too! Fortunately it's the same dye lot, and the colour is no more different than between any of the other skeins. I'm still tempering in the new ball, just in case, but it should be fine. I just finished the first set of cable crosses and I'm looking forward to getting this off the needles and onto my chilly torso. Take that, winter!
Unfortunately I haven't done any studying since I last posted, but I'm hoping to remedy that over the next couple of days. I would like to finish the section on the first breastfeed before I go back to work on Thursday. Maybe I can use the time I would have spent spinning.
I've done some beer drinking this week too, which has been fun! My parents brought us (us being my gentleman partner and myself) some microbrewery beer to thank us for taking care of their dog while they were away. They hardly needed to since I thoroughly enjoy Buddy's visits, but gifts of alcohol are always warmly received in my house. Last night I had a pilsner and tonight I'm enjoying a strong ale that has a lovely heavy-bread taste that pairs beautifully with my tylenol and aspirin. And yes - I know better than to drink alcohol while taking acetaminophen.
Ambitions
There are a few things that I would like to get done this week besides the studying that I mentioned above. I'm hopeful that the "Owls" will be finished tomorrow evening or Tuesday, and I would also like to get the "Ease" sleeves onto stitch holders and get a few more rounds done so that I can get a better idea about the fit. I'm also going to keep plugging away at Jeff's mitts, which I'm doing for A Homespun House's "fingering-weight February" KAL.
Show-and-Tell
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| One of the Picaroons beers that my parents brought us. Analgesics are featured in back and to the right. |
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| This is Buddy - my younger brother/golden retriever. He's a joy :) |
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| This is Chuck (one of my cats) - helping me wind a ball of yarn. The colour isn't very true here. The yarn is actually a forest-green. |
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| This is my mum's "Ease" after I picked the stitches back up. Notice the smaller needle on the left? I used a size 3 to pick them up. |
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| Here is a spindle-full of "Light my Fire". The photo doesn't quite capture the brilliant orangey-red. |
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| This is my favourite stitch marker. I got a couple of sets of beautiful stitch markers from a friend for Christmas and they are all tiny and cute and I LOVE them! This one is my BOR marker on my "Owls". |
That's all I have for now, so take care and thanks so much for stopping by!
