(Note that I wrote this for r/nursing for nursing school, but this is applicable anywhere save for a few numerical details here and there.)
Going off the steps from here: https://yimregister.medium.com/the-abusers-textbook-13-steps-abusers-take-to-trap-victims-fab7bd2a78a1 as well as my personal experiences both at school and work.
- Find people who are vulnerable. This works amazingly because normally, people who pursue nursing problems are a: women and b: women who have personalities that draw them into the field of helping others. How much is this driven by social norms? That's not for the nursing school, or even the students, to discuss. It doesn't matter so long as they get their sweet, sweet demographic.
- Tell them that they're valid, and then love-bomb them. Usually, clinicals don't start until at least the second semester. So that first semester, you can fill their heads with lofty ideals of how great it is to be a nurse and the wide variety of job experiences that you can endure-I mean experience as a nurse.
- Make them believe their friends and family are bad for them. Encourage insularity. Never have groups of more than 15 students, never having more than 5 students within each group, and highly encourage studying together. Scare them into thinking that they may fail the program if they study alone. As their groups become more and more insular, the natural work is done at discouraging contact with those outside the nursing program. And if they do dare to contact those outside the program? Discourage phone usage. And if they have a phone call, ask them to take the conversation outside and force them to have an entire walk of shame across the entire campus building so they can make the call. Teach them that contacting those outside the program is shameful. Slowly begin starting conversations about problems people are having with their families, partners, and other friends, and slowly begin their narrative that these people are toxic and the only healthy people will be in the nursing program.
- Convince them that what they're doing is good. As all of these things are happening, tell the students how much of heroes that they'll be.
- Insist on having them have small roles. Never let them advance as much as they could. Always bar the majority of what they could do and hype up the small bit they are allowed to do. That way, they're always excited and hanging onto that bit of anticipation-and blind to anything toxic that may occur.
- Regulate their physical appearance to “help their public image”. Establish strict uniform requirements that don't matter outside of the school. Require that every student cut their hair and strongly discourage students that dye their hair, even though the local hospitals don't actually require that nurses cut their hair or refrain from dying it. Tell them that doing this will boost their professional reputation. In fact, you're only telling them one thing-that you are the boss.
- Tie the good and the bad together, always. The human brain will always point to what is good first. Tie in the assignment that gives you 6 hours to do unless you want to be kicked out of nursing school and the pizza party that's open to all students that night. If any discourse is brought up over what is bad, the discourse over what is good will quickly punish any and all dissent.
- Instill fear into their procedures. They have to do this process this specific way or else they'll get fired when this is demonstrably false, or they have to do this math this specific way or else they'll fail all assignments that require it. The ones who have remained conscious to the abuse all this time will submit at this stage. But the ones you've managed to subdue will simply buy into this further abuse without any further resistance. This is why this is step 8 instead of step 1.
- Remind them, all this time, you're doing them a favor. This school is incredibly flexible. This school is so cheap. In addition, be a large system of schools that will kick you off every campus within a 60-mile radius if they do kick you out.
- Leverage some kind of blackmail. Require them to give a hefty amount of personal info “for clinicals” for them to use against your future employer at some point. Furthermore, do these personal info assignments again and again, asking for a little more each time embroiled with regular assignments so students are disoriented each time you do it.
- If dissent starts to pile up, don't abuse them further. Instead, love bomb them. The pizza parties and the morning pancakes and the movie nights should only intensify here.
- Know a bit about their psychology to keep them trapped. Know that 68% of all healthcare workers have had an abusive experience, and 33% of them had it before the age of 13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7124651/ So keep the love bombing going, and keep the opportunity to forge healthy connections with nursing students.
- Finally, should worse come to worst and the student get away or enroll somewhere else (despite you repeatedly telling them that they have nowhere else to go), NEVER, EVER let your marketing die. Your marketing is your lifeblood. Because you always need a way to funnel in more victims.
TL; DR: Nursing school can groom you to accept abusive conditions in the workplace. Here's how they do it.