Bullied By Nursing Assistant And Nursing Administration

I have been working as a nurse in New York for the past 8 years. For the past 5 years I had been bullied by some of the nursing assistants, one more so than the others. I complained on several occasions to the assistant nurse managers and manager. To my surprise, they were very defensive of the nursing assistants. Each time I complained, they tried to undermine my complaints and accused me of making them up.

These nursing assistant went as far to ignore patients assigned to me. These patients were not given hygiene care and sometimes left lie in their filth for hours. The glucose monitoring were not done on my patients or if they were done or they would not be documented, forcing me to go directly to the nursing assistant and ask for them. I complained unrelentlessly to the nurse manager without any action being taken. Each time I complained, the situation got worse.

I was also subjected to verbal abuse and harassed by the nursing assistants. I was called "ugly" and other derogatory statements made to me. At one point it got physical. I was hit with the lunch cart by one of the nursing assistants. She made it appeared as if it was an accident. However, she later can to me and boasted "that's what you get when you don't move."

I have reported all these incidents to human resources and nursing administration without recoursive action taken. I was told I was jealous of the nursing assistants and the nursing director at that time, went as far as to tell me she is not surprised more people are not hit with the cart. This harassment continued as I said for years. I wrote letters upon letters to HR and nursing administration. I tried to ignore the harassers and put on a brave face.

I stopped complaining, but the harassment continued. I kept ignoring her. When she realized that I was not responding to her harassment, the bully accused me of pushing her. I was called to the nursing director's office regarding the matter. The nursing director was newly appointed and so I informed her that I had issues in the past with this person. I also told her I have made several complaints to human resources about her and basically, this was another attempt at harassment. I then went to human resources and made another harassment complaint. As usual this complaint was also ignored.

To make a long story short, the nurse manager, director of nursing and human resource employee relations decided to have a meeting with me and decide to bully me and accused me of fabricating these complaints. I was very suspicious that they all wanted to have a meeting with me. As, I said I am currently working at this hospital, but have recently been transferred to another unit after the same bully attempted to physically attack me.

This was witnessed by a nurse floating to the unit. She initially thought she was horsing around with me. I informed her that what she saw was not a joke. She became scared and denied what she actually saw. Needless to say, as usual, I was bullied by the nursing director and managers. I wrote a letter to the CEO informing him of the situation. He did not respond instead I received a call the vice president of human resources.

I have since been transfered to another unit and was the bully. All I have to say about the entire situation is, it was a utter nightmare. Had I not been as strong and determined as I was, I would have had a mental breakdown. I continued to pursue my education and knew that one day, this would all come to an end. I am thoroughly disappointed with my co-workers, managers, nursing administration and employee relations. They allowed the individual to harass not only myself, but another employee that they had to transfer to another and at least two other people I am aware of.

Thanks " Y....... E....... "