Especially for the students: The bully professor

An astute Anonymous Minion commented on my bully post below that she'd/he'd had trouble with bullying professors in school. I don't particularly want to go back and find the quote, as I'm currently recovering from a FABULOUS alcohol-and-food-soaked weekend, but it was along the lines of "Dude. Totes not the case. My nursing professors are snacking on the bodies of students even as we speak."

Except more eloquent than that.

I don't know if I've told this story before, but the first day of finals in my first semester of nursing school, I had to put down my beloved, beloved dog. She'd been sick for a while and had taken a sudden and awful turn for the worst, so I skipped a clinical exam with the assurance that I would and could make it up the next day.

When I went to the professor who was administering that exam, (who, by the way, was fine with me making it up) she told me the following thing:

"You know, you're going to have to learn to prioritize what's really important."

My clearest memory of that encounter was thinking, "I could put her up to the wall and nail that gorram bow on the back of her head to these lockers."

Later, I had a professor who told us quite bluntly that all nurses were codependent, bitchy, and mentally ill. Even later than that, I had a third professor who used her position to advance her own quite odd ideas about health care--believe me when I tell you that a "Vitamin C cleanse" was the least weird thing she brought up in patho--and go on political rants unrelated to the course.

It wasn't until I had been a nurse for a couple of years that I realized that all these women had one thing in common: they hated nursing as a career. They'd gotten *out* of hospital nursing because they either couldn't manage the speed and intensity of floor work (the first professor was quite frank about that) or they were depressed or disgruntled by, you know, actually having to conform to things like protocols and policies.

The instructors I had who were still working as nurses, on the other hand, were fantastic. They were, thank God, in the majority--and they were, as a group, some of the toughest, strongest, most skilled women I have ever met in any profession. They were nurturing in the best sense of the word: emphasizing strengths, correcting weaknesses, and not afraid to admit when they didn't know the answers. They were realistic about the weirdos we were likely to encounter, and gave us tools to deal with them. They demanded respect not by being autocratic, but by showing us students what good nursing really was. Some of them would express frustration with doctors or hospital policies or the nursing world in general sometimes, but that frustration was always tempered with the lesson that some things that frustrate you nonetheless have a purpose.

As a result of that experience, and as a result of working with dozens of other nursing professors from other institutions over the years, I look at nursing professors with slightly narrowed eyes now. Honestly, if somebody's still working a floor job or an ICU job on weekends, I tend to take them more seriously--that's my personal prejudice, and I own it.

The point of this is that, if you have a professor who's a bully--belittling, negative, angsty about nursing in general--you should look at where they're coming from. It's not necessarily going to help you solve the bullying problem, but it'll at least give you an insight into their psychology. It might even help to keep you from getting too depressed.

Of the nine professors I had through school, three were bugnuts insane. Of the probably three dozen professors I've worked with in a clinical setting, there have been five I was very, very concerned about. The rest of 'em, whether in my own school or in the hospital, have ranged from good to awesome. They're out there, the good instructors--it's just that the way the typical nursing school is funded and run makes it hard for the good ones to be obviously good. They're too busy grading and running committees and publishing.

My advice? Look for the good 'uns. Make an effort to get to know those professors who you could see as solid mentors outside of class. Use them as buffers against the bugnuttery. Polish your Crazy Detector, and keep it active during your first year or two as a nurse.

And do not despair. Corporate culture varies greatly from hospital to hospital. The culture can even be changed from the inside (but that's another post for another time). If you find yourself in the alligator pit, the beauty of nursing as a job is that you can always find a less-reptile-infested place to work.

And, if you can find a good 'un or two, to bloom.

If you're one of the students I precept, I will do my level best to make you less frightened of what's coming. You and me, we're in this thing together, and you can teach me as much as I can teach you. Provided I don't go bugnuts from this weekend's mashed-potato-and-wine overdose.