Medical units thrive when everyone respects each other’s expertise.

But when one lead nurse demanded everyone follow her authority without question, the other nurses decided to show her just how that demand would come back to bite her.

Read on for the full story!

Every decision of care has to be run by you? Ok

My mother was a nurse. She worked in the same medical/surgical unit for almost 30 years.

Every year, a new set of medical residents would come through. They were mostly nice and eager to learn from everyone, including the nurses.

However, there is always an outlier.

This particular shift had hit a bit of a snag.

One afternoon, one of the patients on the floor had an issue.

No problem, because this is not the first time this has happened in the history of this said treatment, and there is a written protocol on how to make adjustments.

So the nurses worked hard to respond the best way they knew how.

The seasoned nurses have seen this before and have made changes to this order hundreds of times.

The nurse in charge did the adjustment, and all was well.

But this was the wrong thing to do in someone else’s eyes.

However, when the prescribing resident found out, she went crazy, yelling at everyone about usurping her authority.

Then she said that any changes to care for her patients had to be approved by her first.

Ok, game on.

So the nurses did just that!

For the next week, this resident was paged for Every! Single! Solitary! Thing! Especially when the resident went on nap break during 36-hour shifts.

This went on for two weeks because the resident complained to everyone, thinking that people would side with her.

This malicious compliance proved to be incredibly effective.

When she saw that the senior doctors or her fellow residents wouldn’t back her up, she gave up and let the nurses use their judgment.

Never mess with the nurses.

It didn’t take long for this resident to realize rigidity only made things harder for her.

What did Reddit think about this story?

You know what they say about nurses…

This one problematic resident may be thinking too highly of her authority.

When people behave this way, it can sometimes be a sign of insecurity.

When it comes to nurses, this user has a healthy amount of fear.

This resident would have been better off just staying out of the other nurses’ way!

Sometimes experience speaks louder than authority.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.