Bullying In The Nursing Profession

Effectively, interpersonal conflict was found to be one of the major sources of stress for nurses. Fudge (2006) affirmed overt and covert types of horizontal and vertical violence. Overt violence is obvious for everyone to see whereas covert is the complete opposite while still encouraging cruelty to one’s peers (Fudge, 2006). However, partnerships within health care settings may be declining due to the fact that some nurses may feel overworked and stressed. Jacoba Leiper (2005) stated that nurses are under pressure to complete their workload during their shift. Thus the nurse who’s having trouble completing her work on time, may skip breaks or stay late to avoid the ire of those on later shifts. But if she doesn’t take these steps and regularly fails to complete her tasks during her shifts, she may irritate her peers or take her anger out on her peers as well. Thus, the

“The first step in teaching nurses how to decrease bullying by others is to help them understand what to do and what not to do when confronted by a bully” (Rocker, 2008, Education, para. 13). Nurses need to be aware of how to recognize horizontal violence, and how to be able to stop it. Furthermore, Baltimore (2006) explained that nurses need to try and resist the temptation of participating in gossip which could ultimately result in people losing respect for nurses (p. 35). Nurses also need to be respectful and value differences among other nurses. Each nurse is unique and may have different ways of implementing his/her type of care. Therefore, it is crucial that nurses respect these differences (Rocker, 2008, Policy, para. 14). If nurses are able to be consciously aware of these small things, it can make a huge difference on how they treat other coworkers, and how others view them. Not only is it important for nurses to understand what horizontal violence is, but managers of hospitals need to be well educated of this as well. Brunt (2011) stated that managers have a key role in preventing and altering horizontal violence in the workforce. It is important that managers create an environment where staff members feel comfortable coming to the managers with concerns. Managers need to be educated about how to deal with the negativity of horizontal violence (p. 7). Managers can improve relationships, trust, and productivity and reduce tension by

Bullying can produce and maintain a poisonous work environment. Nurses who bully can wear down the job satisfaction of their co workers which can result in a loss of productivity and increased absences in the workplace (Stokowski, 2010). Victims of bullying often have a feeling of impending doom and dread when they think about their upcoming work days. Each time the bullying reoccurs, the victims usually

Teamwork, collaboration, and empowerment are descriptive terms that many current and future nurses expect to be incorporated within their working environment. It is not unusual for nurses to work as a team with other health care professionals as well as one another to provide the best care for a patient. Therefore, one would think that a primary goal among nurses would in fact be collaboration. Yet, as a general step towards attacking all types of violence, many researchers have exposed violence in the healthcare setting. Also referred to as workplace bullying, lateral violence, is a specific type of workplace violence that is exceedingly present in the nursing profession. Lateral violence could be considered an antonym of the terms spoken

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

For instance, one way of bullying could be a case where managers can ask their staffs to perform duties which they well know are beyond the staff’s ability since they have no knowledge of what to be done on such duties. Furthermore, the managers may not pay attention when the employees bully each and at the same time they may take advantage of the bullying as way of improving and managing their organization. Additional nurse types of bullying include:

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.

Workplace bullying is a growing problem in the American workplace and the Nursing Profession no exception. Addressing workplace bullying and its impact on the nursing profession is paramount to upholding patient safety and decreasing nursing attrition rates. Defining the problem is the first step in addressing it. In the past, workplace bullying was referred to as “Nurses eating their young.” There are many names for the various levels of workplace bullying like horizontal and lateral violence, hostility, mobbing, and verbal abuse. Bullying actions can take place overtly or covertly. Nurse-to-Nurse bullying is known to occur during interaction communications and manifests by withholding information, intimidation, threats, verbalizing harsh innuendo and criticism, and undermining personal values and beliefs (Rocker, 2008). Power disparities are also a source of bullying. For example, using charge position for controlling staff assignments, reporting coworkers for perceived lack of productivity, placing others under pressure to achieve impossible deadlines, and withholding knowledge for policies and procedures (Rocker, 2008). Outright actions of yelling at coworkers and refusing to mentor new staff with their practice are also considered bullying behavior.

Nurses are more likely to make errors in caring for their patients when they do not have the appropriate support from their coworkers. The demeaning behavior causes the person being bullied not to ask questions or seek assistance when they are unsure of a task. This leads to making assumptions in the care of the patient and unfortunately

Even though workplace politics exists in every profession, the effects of horizontal violence, or bullying, in nursing is a costly behavior. Nurses feel devalued in the workplace and experience psychological effects. Patients are likely to experience less favorable outcomes, and

Acts of incivility such as bullying, lateral violence, or harassment in the work place negatively affects nursing performance, mental health, and retention within an organization or even the profession of nursing (Warrner, 2016). A policy in the American Nurses Association (ANA) proclaims that the nursing profession will not tolerate violence of any kind from any source (ANA, 2015b). The Code of Ethics for Nurses by ANA requires nurses to promote an ethical environment and culture of civility with an emphasis on treating all parties with dignity and respect (ANA, 2015a). A study conducted in a rural Kentucky hospital’s medical- surgical units concluded that educational trainings in itself did not reduce the frequency of experiencing incivility in their unit (Armstrong, 2017). Nevertheless, nurses in the study reported that educational trainings increased their ability to recognize and appropriately respond to workplace incivility (Armstrong, 2017).

Bullying is a serious problem in the nursing profession, it decreases nurse productivity, creates adverse patient outcomes, and overall lack of job satisfaction. It can be seen anywhere in the nursing profession. Bullying includes emotional and physical abuse as well as, putting others down, intimidation, spreading rumors, etc. “Research findings suggest that bullying frequently occurs among RNs [6] to the extent that up to 40% of nurses report an intent to leave because of it [7]; this is significant especially for new nurses, in that new RNs reported being bullied at work which resulted in 30% of

Several models and concepts arose in preventative measures to workplace violence in nursing. One conceptual model, according to Covert Crime at Work, is “a conceptual model derived from 370 surveys show working conditions conducive to bullying, thus helping to identify risks early and to prevent unhealthy environments from developing.” After recognition of these research and studies, organizations such as Occupations Safety and Hazard Association, American Nurses Associations, and etc, have implemented guidelines to prevent workplace violence in nursing.

Bullying among nurses has been a problem that has been around for decades. The background source, “Nurse Bullying: Stand Up and Speak Out” written by Colduvell (2017) provides a lot of explanation and statistics regarding the Nurse Bullying problem. The author Colduvell makes a great point, that Nurse Bullying has been an issue that can be track all the way back to the year 1986. This interesting point in Colduvell’s article helps to show the world that this bullying has been happening for over 32 years and yet instead of decreasing it has increased in the recent years. Another critical information used in the article is that Colduvell (2017) stated, “that approximately 60% of new nurses leave their position within six months due to some form

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,