A conversation with a senior physician triggered this question. He’s been 35 years on the job and recently wrote me a letter of recommendation.
I’m changing wards due to drama and a manager who only wants gossip, dumbed down nurses at her unit.
This is a physician I’ve only talked to like 5 times in the 18 months I’ve been working at my old ward, somebody every other nurse at the unit told me to leave alone, because he’s a senior physician (yes, that was the reason).
My former manager put a bare C on my performance review, something I didn’t sign, so I asked this doctor to write a short text numbering my duties and what I can do to show my new ward but he wrote a full fledged letter of recommendation instead.
What the doctor told me while signing it: you’re good at informing patients and take the extra step sensing what analysis they need, I’ve never had a nurse with so much positive feedback from so many patients, you’re never gonna be a good fit here because the manager is a gossip and she controls the unit and you don’t talk much, if you ever want to work PACU, tell me as I know the senior doctor there. Keep doing what you do, you’ll find a good fit eventually.
I’ve already used downtime to read and learn, but nursing being gossipy and catty, all I achieved was being accused of being lazy, unfriendly, neglecting patients and a conversation with mentioned gossip manager, because she always believed her friends over me. She never asked me for my side of the story, but accused me directly.
Back to the doctor’s conversation: keep doing what I do means reading and learning during downtime at the workplace: first thing I want to do at my new unit is showing them the letter of recommendation and explaining I want to learn and I learn better alone, when I read.
I also want to tell them I’m not a talkative person (meaning I don’t care about drama or gossip), but I really don’t know how a group of mostly women who don’t know me can react to that.
While I have no experience of healthcare, I know that office politics and culture can be a nightmare in any workplace. What I also know is that we are or own ‘brands’ and if we want to be good at anything we need to develop ourselves as we see fit. This is part of being professional. You choose to do it in work break hours where you have the time and maybe are less tied. Maybe it gives you access to people who can help when you need it. All this is good, but I think it’s worth noting that you will miss out on some of the office culture (for better or worse). Professionalism is as much about what you know as well as your network, and people make snap judgements about others. You seem to have come off badly this time, these things happen, but are fixable one way of another. What if you (force yourself to) spend one break ‘socialising’ every now and again? You may be able to turn the conversion into something more worthwhile. You may find someone who will become a real asset.
I’m waaaaay along the spectrum and I too would rather learn than idly chat. The above is very hard for me to do, but I have reluctantly found that there are benefits. It’s a bigger picture thing.
Be you and do your thing, but do it strategically. I suspect that your ‘brand’ is very saleable, so if it’s not working where you are, you can always try elsewhere.