Kindness Matters

I’ve read an article today on incivility in the workplace among nurses. How a year’s worth of high alert pandemic may be translated into bullying and other uncivil behaviors. Incivility is defined as “lateral violence, horizontal violence and bullying”. “Any behavior that is intended to humiliate, demean or diminish and leads to a power relationship where the abuser seeks to control the victim.” I would add that it is intended by the abuser to take control of untenable feelings of powerlessness, aggravated sadness and a sense of whole-hearted doom. It’s effect can be devastating to the victim but I suspect there is a degree of devastation for the abuser as well. A hidden cry for help, perhaps. I was a victim recently of a charge nurse tasked with taking care of my Covid positive husband struggling to breath. My first contact with the hospital and his care team 7 days into his care, was by this charge nurse. She called to reprimand me for the behavior of a friend who had called concerned about my husband. I had to interrupt her rant to ask how he was doing. She said she wasn’t his direct nurse so she didn’t really know. She then continued to berate me for the behavior of someone else.

I myself am Covid positive and struggling on many levels at home. I was not up to the task of responding well to her. Her words shook my confidence in the staff caring for my family. It was that confidence that was carrying me through so you can imagine my struggle when I couldn’t trust he was being taken care of well. When I was a kid at night in bed, I would lie as still as I could possibly manage trying to make my breath imperceptible because I imagined that Dracula would visit me and if I had any sign of life he would take me away.

I thought about that today as my headaches and nausea bear down on me. Ever since that nurse reprimanded me, it has been as if I have been managing to lie as still as I can so that evil won’t take me. If I can shut down just enough, the life sucking Dracula will pass me by. At least, that is what my vulnerable, little girl self thought.

Perhaps prolonged illness and the stress it brings peels back layers of competency that have accumulated over the years leaving only a vulnerable little girl lying still, praying for intervention. I imagine that charge nurse is that little girl as well.

Inaction, however, is not the needed response to suffering. I would plead with us all to bring encouragement, kindness, and understanding to this world crying for help. If a charge nurse is up to bullying the sick, who else among us must be struggling as well? All those words to simply say: Kindness matters. So BE KIND.

Please.

Anne

January 17, 2021