BACCN Twitter Chat #rude

10th Oct 2019

Well, the twitter chat regarding rudeness at work was brilliant!! A massive thank you to everyone who took part. Sadly it seems that most of us are the victims of rudeness at work every week and often daily. 

Causes of rudeness may be overwork, stress, tiredness and unachievable expectations. HALT (hungry, angry, late and tired) was suggested as an acronym for the potential to be rude. We can all empathise with staff in this position!!! 

We talked about how rudeness makes us feel and you offered some very powerful examples "underappreciated" "undervalued" "belittled" "feeling dismissed" "distracted" and "questioning my profession". We also felt that not all rudeness is verbal and how an eye roll and looking the other way when you are speaking can be just as upsetting for the recipient. But does rudeness at work affect your job and how you make decisions. You thought it did. We reflect on that episode of rudeness long after the event and when put in a similar situation this has the potential to have a cumulative stress effect. This in turn affects how we make clinical decisions, how confident we are and how able we feel to stand up for ourselves and our patients. It can create a culture of fear!

So what is the answer. It is unlikely that out stress levels, workloads and hunger pangs are going to reduce anytime soon! For me it is about having emotional intelligence, an awareness of the incidence and impact being rude can have on another person and how, often unintentionally, you may be the rude one! Our ability to reflect on our own behavior and how others may view us is so important especially when we hold leadership roles. It is often so easy to forget about the pressures others are under, the stress felt by a newly qualified nurse, the ward nurse trying to free up beds for patients waiting in the emergency department. 

My take home messages from the chat were before I make judgement on others remember the saying "walk a mile in my shoes". We don't know what pressures that person is feeling. Kill them with kindness, manners, compassion and respect cost nothing!!! Finally an acceptance that we all have it in us to be rude to others so the ability to reflect and the courage to go back and say "I'm sorry" makes us the people we want to be.

Please find our usual Twitter wakelet summary https://wke.lt/w/s/SPBDfp that can be used for revalidation purposes. 

Why not join us for our next twitter chat which will be taking place on Tuesday the 5th of November where we'll be talking about "compliance with EWS", so why not join in and #keeptheconversationgoing  https://www.baccn.org/events/twitter-chats/

Thank you

@credland_nicki on behalf of the @BACCNUK