Nursing is a little different from most kinds of work environments, but not that different.

I think there’s 2 halves to unpack here. One is her ability and the other is her attitude. If someone is getting along in their career and has trouble hustling around on their feet for 8 or 12 hours, I get it. They can move slower or take longer sitting breaks when there’s no patient in dire need. That’s why people work on teams.

But then there’s the attitude part. Are other nurses dealing with her patients on the regular? Is she ignoring call bells? Is she never making any effort to help a fellow nurse when they’re swamped? Then we have a problem.

Like you said, you’re new and it’s not the time to go in guns blazing. Your reputation doesn’t mean shit for a while now, but I don’t think that means you should just suck it up and do your job in spite of it.

I would mention it casually to your manager. Not as a complaint (see: your reputation doesn’t mean shit), but as a casual concern. “I didn’t want to say anything to X, but I’ve been noticing since I started that she seems to really struggle to deal with her patient load.” Whether you try to frame that along with “how can I help?” or something else is up to you.

The main thing you want to take away is:

• your manager has been informed by you that you’ve seen a problem with this nurse
• you documented the conversation if it was in person
• you’re keeping notes on your coworker when something unacceptable happens.

These sorts of dramas play out slowly. The best thing you can do is collect information you can refer back to later in case things take a twist.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life an employee has become “a problem” in management’s eyes, but we’re starting at 0 because nobody ever complained or documented any of the issues that were going on for YEARS.