Bullying In Nursing

To the public eye, hospitals and nurses are there for them and their work environment seems like one that would promote growth in the work place, but the public doesn’t see what happens behind the curtain at these hospitals. Bullying can be in every company, but the public never really sees it happening just the employees that work there. The definition of bullying according to Terri Townsend, who wrote “Break the bullying cycle”, states that “[b]ullying is defined as repeated, offensive, abusive, intimidating, or insulting behaviors; abuse of power; or unfair sanctions that make recipients feel humiliated, vulnerable, or threatened, thus creating stress and undermining their self-confidence” (Townsend). This bullying greatly affects the employees and makes the work place environment suffer. By using Bruno Bettelheim’s essay “The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank”, as a reference to compare why these employees put up with what happens to them at work. A very common everyday example where work place bullying/dehumanization happens would be the employees of McDonalds in Barbara Garson’s essay “McDonald’s – We Do It All for You”, which shows what these employees put up with on a daily basis. There is a huge difference in work places from that of a hospital to that of McDonald’s, but the question is why do these employees put up with the abuse? Hospital employees are also scared to stand up to their supervisors, because they don’t want to face the possible consequences that would

In 2009 unspecified electronic survey was conducted with factors such as type, frequency, perpetrators, and professional/personal concerns on bullying identified (Quine, 2001). The results revealed that out of 330 RN respondents, 72% reported positive to bullying at various occasions in line of their career. Of this segment, clear hostility seemed most frequent in surgical/medical, operational rooms, emergency, obstetrical areas of care and adolescent residential behavioral/ mental health units. The main culprits to these act are non-other than; charge nurses, senior nurses, physicians and nurse managers. This is impartial research among others that have been

In a profession where caring is the epicenter of the job, it is disconcerting to see a high occurrence of bullying in the nursing environment. Lateral bullying and lateral violence are terms used to describe bullying, uncivil behavior, disrespect, social devaluing, peer control and verbal, physical and emotional abuse occurring between nurses and or colleagues (Ceravolo et al., 2012). Abusive behaviors from a superior are considered vertical or hierarchal violence and are commonly seen when the superior attempts to control or bully the nurse using their superiority, often leaving the nurse feeling defenseless due to an imbalance in power and control (Broome & Williams-Evans, 2011). Some examples of bullying include harsh criticism, unfairly blaming others for mistakes, and withholding patient care information (Simons et al., 2011). In a recent study measuring workplace bullying, Simons, Stark and DeMarco (2011) found that the most common behaviors those feeling bullied experienced included being assigned workloads they felt were unmanageable, and being ignored or excluded by their peers.

In a health and social care setting bullying can be lead to a nurse or socialwoker e.g. who is verbal bullying an elderly patient with sexual orientation. calling them names because of their orientation sex such as stupid, smelly, you look like a girl . Or boy. This will effect the patient physical, emotionally and

Medical facilities have to start paying more nurses to stay late for work because without adequate staffing the job duties tend to get behind. Facilities have to pay nurses more money to keep them on call or higher contracting nurses. Hospitals, clinics and other patient care facilities continue to lose money every day when nurses are bullied because it also effects patient satisfaction. “Occupational exposure to bullying decrease job satisfaction”(Ceravolo, Schwartz, Foltz-Ramos, & Castner, 2012, p. 600). Being a nurse who is a victim of bulling on a day-to-day basis will cause stress in the nurse’s life. If the bulling does not cease in the facilities, nurses will not be completely satisfied with their job and retention will remain a problem for many hospitals and clinics. Nurse retention is another problem that patient care facilities deal with because losing a nurse only means the facility will have to pay more money to replace another nurse. In a retrospective analysis the cost of hiring a new nurse average around $62,000 to $ 67,000 to recruit, orient and hire a r.n. (Wilson, Diedrich, Phelps, & Choi, 2011). In the end, the cycle will continue and the result will be nurse retention if bullying does not stop and is address within a hospital or a clinic.

Typically, when someone thinks of a bully, childhood memories of scuffles on the playground come to mind. Bullies are not usually people that are associated with adult life. However, nursing has changed this stereotypical view. For many nurses, bullying may be as great a threat every day at work as it was when they were in grade school. This threat is because of what is termed as horizontal or lateral violence in the workplace, and it is a surprisingly, prominent issue in the field of nursing. Furthermore, horizontal violence is a detrimental problem in nursing due to its damaging and negative effects on nurses and the nursing profession as a whole.

In the literature, 20% to 44% of nurses are reported to have been subjected to bullying ( Austin, 2013). Nurses and midwives are commonly exposed to bullying behaviours because they are often employed at workplaces that have systems and organisational structures in place that are well recognised as exacerbating the risk of bullying. Bullied victims’ mental health is significantly affected. Victims suffer serious psychiatric, psychosomatic, and psychosocial problems (Leymann, 1996). In a study

2004) • Younger, inexperienced nurses or nursing students may not have the confidence or lack the communication skills to resolve the aggressive behavior “Students often felt unable to deal with specific incidents and one way of responding was by removing themselves from the situation when possible” • Nursing, under Florence Nightingale, developed as a very hierarchical system where submission was ‘expected, encouraged, indeed, demanded’ (Reverby 2005, p. 247). • Co-workers may witness abuse however few step in and diffusion the situation as they fear being victimized themselves. Thus, aggressive behavior continues and is silently tolerated by the victim. • The outcome of continual exposure to bullying includes trauma such as lowered self-esteem (Randle 2003), depression, anxiety (Quine 2001) and post-traumatic stress disorder (Mikkelsen and Einarsen

Lateral violence (LV), is described as one or more secretly or blatantly targeting their discontentment towards each other, themselves or those weaker than themselves. Some may classify it as bullying, aggression, horizontal violence (HV) or professional terrorism, and it 's characterized by facial expressions, spiteful comments, hindering of important information, criticism, blaming, and disregard in all degrees with some so severe they 've resulted in suicide. Lateral violence has been in literature for 20 years and still vastly exists today (Griffin, 2014). Due to the traumatic effect bullying has on a nurse physically and psychologically, along with the safety of the patients she cares for, interventions must take place immediately to bring it to an end. If LV is allowed to continue, the effects it has on the nursing profession are critical such as nursing shortages, staff burnouts, elevated nurse resignation rates and a decline in the amount and quality of work one performs accompanied with a high potential for patient related errors (Becher & Visovsky, 2012). Organizations, managers and nurses are all responsible for eliminating lateral violence in the nursing workplace because each role directly impacts this major issue through education, tolerance and interactions.

Unfortunately, bullying amongst nurses has been a dark undertone in the profession throughout it’s history. An all to common phrase of “nurses eat their young” is often expressed in current and past nursing environments. Nurses care tirelessly for their patients with compassion and grace yet don’t seem to want to take care of their own. Many have come to believe this is simply the way it is, similar to an initiation or right of passage. Bullying, incivility and horizontal violence have no place in the nursing profession. Bullying can be defined as “situations where an employee is persistently picked on or humiliated by leaders or fellow co-workers” (Longo and Hain, 2014). Horizontal or lateral violence occurs when the behavior is between colleagues, or between two nurses with the same power. Bullying can show its ugly

The mention of the subject of bullying arouses various scenarios of young middle school or high school children hitting and taking advantage of one another. Due to this mentality, we have believed that the act of bullying is one the ends in childhood. However, it is sad that this act has progressed into adulthood and penetrated into the nursing profession. I am in the Blue team, thus the problem this paper is going to address is,“Horizontal Violence among new graduate nurses.” Horizontal violence is simply the act of bullying and abuse among nurses that occurs in every level of clinical practice, research and education (Egues & Leaning, 2013).

The prevalence of bullying in the nursing profession is high according to a survey done by The Joint Commission which states more than 50% of nurses have experienced some form of bullying at work while more than 90% have reported witnessing this type of behavior. The survey also found that 75% of the nurses believed it negatively affected patient care (Felblinger, 2008). In another study, it was found that out of 303 nurses, 65% reported being bullied or had witnessed incidents of bullying (Egues &

Bullying in the work place is a never a comfortable thing, especially for the victims. Nurses spend over half of their day at work, which is more than what they spend with their family. Therefore, it is important that the work force is safe from bullying and is accommodating to everyone. Bullying has been a problem in the work place for a number of years and the same goes for the nursing workforce. Bullying is a very disruptive behavior in the workplace and it can lower the morale among staff as a result. This type of disruptive behavior will cause nursing staff to call out on a regular basis, or even quit their jobs. Bullying can also lower the standard of the profession and when patients see such disruptive behavior, it also makes the profession looks bad. Moreover, bullying can be very detrimental to the nurses’ ability to care for their patients. It can have a major psychological effect on nurses, that they can loose

Bullying is a serious issue that frequently happens during a nursing shortage. Since hospitals need to recruit new nurses when their nurses left. Therefore, new nurses are usually the target of bullying by the old nurses. Accordingly, bullying can cause even more burdens to the challenges that the novice nurses or new nurses have to face on the daily basis. As the findings in this research, the bullying acts may be on personal attack, competence or work tasks. And the consequences of this issue can cause diminished self-esteem, distress that lead to physical and emotional damages for these nurses; that is why more nurses want to leave their job because of job dissatisfaction, or else, they will put their patients' safety in danger (Olender,

Workplace bullying is a phenomenon that affects many organizations, especially among healthcare professionals. “Bullying of nurses has been identified as affecting patient outcomes, occupational stress, and staff turnover with fifty percent of those reported being bullied identified managers or directors as the bullies”(Etienne, 2014, p. 6). This paper will analyze data, information, knowledge, and wisdom continuum as it relates to workplace bullying in the healthcare environment. It will identify appropriate databases for obtaining information, useable knowledge, the role of informatics, and the progression from useful knowledge to applied wisdom.