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Susan had also received a phone-call from the endoscopy suite asking for
someone to pick up a patient. The usual policy was for a qualified member
of staff to bring patients back to the ward. However, in this case as the
patient had received a nasal spray and not an anaesthetic and was
unlikely to have any complications it would be all right for either Susan, as
a student nurse, or Paul as the healthcare assistant to escort her to the
ward. Susan had scheduled a meeting on her previous ward to pick up her
belated continuous assessment document because the staff had not had
time to complete the paperwork before she had left. So she asked Paul
since he was already going to the endoscopy suite would he please pick
up the patient but he refused. Susan, being assertive as she thought,
repeated her request to bring the patient back explaining this time that it
would be a good use of time management and re-iterating that she didn‘t
want to be late for her appointment on the other ward. Still Paul refused
saying it wasn‘t his job. There was no-one else to ask, so Susan ended up
going down to the endoscopy suite and then went onto her appointment,
arriving slightly late and flustered.
When she arrived back on the ward there was an atmosphere. Paul had
been talking about her behind her back accusing her of being ―bossy‖,
―stand-offish‖ and wanting to be ―matron‖. Susan had heard him
complaining about her to other staff and chastising another health care
assistant who hadn‘t agreed with his position. Paul considered she was
―siding‖ with Susan, a mere student, because she had told him that in her
opinion Susan had not asked in ―an aggressive bossy way‖.
A little later on the same shift, Susan and Paul were called into the office
to talk about what had happened, a kind of debriefing session with the
team leader. Listening to the story I was thinking ―great some reflection in
the team!‖ Instead Susan went onto describe Paul accusing her of being
bossy and aggressive. She was not encouraged to put her side of the
story so she plucked up courage and said in her opinion she had not acted
aggressively. The team leader said it was important to talk about the
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