I think you should always treat someone as you would like to be treated. Always be true to yourself. Even though somebody wants another answer, if you believe in your heart…

This happened to me. An administrator wanted me to put the recovery room under the ICU. At the time and we were building a new wing. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. I thought that once they built a new hospital then they could make that decision. The administrator was livid with me. I did it for the staff and for my head nurse, but my head nurse went behind my back about it.

I was reassigned. It cost me. But I taught them that they were the last place in the world to do a computer program and they’re in the heart of Silicon Valley.

So they asked me to the quality assurance and I told them that I didn’t want to do that. I told her I’d rather do the computer program.

That’s what I did until we moved to Georgia. I learned that in my heart I would have been a phony doing that.

You have to think about other people. You have to think about the impact on the entire group, not just one person. That person was reassigned. She was actually anorexic. She almost died. She had real mood swings.

I went through five different chief nurses is in ten years. It was back-and-forth with management, which was very hard.

And of course I had my little battles with surgeons. I had one narrow surgeon who was absolutely awful.

I don’t know if you ever read the book called Walking With the Boys about a female nurse. She was on sabbatical, but when she came back she said “I’m sorry that happened to you,” and got rid of him.