How Healthcare Works, LLC

As a former faculty member, I often heard students who were nurses comment about the "nurses eat their own" philosophy.  They found it to be disheartening and upsetting, and some stated this treatment caused them to depart from floor nursing.  As a non-nurse, I wondered about this phenomena. How and why do nurses eat their own? At the very foundation of this behavior is the idea that new nurses must be somehow "schooled" or "trained" by those with experience.  Nurses don't simply restrict this behavior to nurses, but also extend their "training" to those outside of the nursing profession who work in health care.  The training may include the usual routines of nursing, charting, patient care, passing medications, and the ins and outs of the health care system.  Beyond that, new nurses may be given instruction on the not so obvious aspects of health care.  They may intentionally be given difficult shifts, patients who require more care or be