Frustration...

So, over the last few months I've noticed that I've become more and more bitchy at work. And not my typical "bold like a lion" self. More like mean like a snake. And it's not the patients. It's the freaking cynical people I work with. Not all of them, granted. But some of them just are always so negative. It only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch, right? Well, I'm easily spoiled. I get stressed out and instead of those in charge giving me a word of encouragement they go bad mouth me to my peers. Then they have enough nerve to ask me why people in this ER can't get along and why we're all back stabbing...Well dur....You set the bar because you're the CHARGE NURSE. If you're playing high-school games, you can expect the rest of the staff too...

I admit, I am easy to pull down. In some ways I am a leader. Unfortunately, in others I am a follower. And if I'm surrounded by negativity and trash talking it's very easy to pull me down to that level. On the same hand, if I'm surrounded by positive attitudes and people so happy to be be doing what they're doing, it can be pulled to a higher level. I recognize that since I am now a nurse, it's partly my responsibility to set the standard, and not just the standard of care. But a standard of professionalism and attitude. I don't want to be a follower of the negative. I want to be a leader of positive!

So I am truly working on this. It's just hard to change a mind-set that has been with me for 30 years. But I can think of two specific instances in the last three weeks that I have shut my mouth and just smiled while another peer unloaded on me. Usually I would have let my mouth say stuff that would make Satan blush in order to tell the other person off. However, I didn't. Even though those people deserved what I had to say. Why? Because now I must help to set the bar.

I'm just so frustrated. I don't like dreading going to work. I don't like counting the minutes until I can go home. I just hope that I can and do change my own personal frame of mind. I hope I can become impossible to drag down and easy to pull up.

If you are the praying kind, keep me and my attitude in your prayers. Please.

That is all.