Giving new graduate nurses the busiest patient assignments as a "rite of passage" is really just another form of nurse bullying, travel nurse Mariam Yazdi, BSN, RN, wrote in an op-ed for Nurse.org.
"Being given admission after admission, with a patient load of seven and eight, while the charge nurse and his or her friends have four or five patients is how nurses eat their young," Ms. Yazdi wrote.
She said this practice can create a toxic work culture in which nurses who lack seniority are discriminated against. Ms. Yazdi acknowledged it can be uncomfortable to speak up about this unfair treatment but said young nurses must do so to help create a better work culture for themselves and future nurses.
"You can change the narrative. You have the ability to stop the cycle of bullying," she wrote in the op-ed. "Don't allow your pain to be passed on to another generation of nurses. Empower yourself to use your voice. Your patients, your career and your well-being ask it of you."