Workplace Bullying Can Take On Many Forms. Lateral Violence

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

This paper explores five published articles as they relate to the concept of Lateral violence (LV) within the nursing profession and how it directly affects the work environment. The concept of LV is also known as abusive behavior, horizontal violence, bullying, aggression, horizontal hostility, verbal abuse or “nurses eating their young”. There are four main themes that appear throughout the five articles. The negative effects that LV has on nurses’ health, moral and sense of worth. The negative impact that LV has on patient care and outcome. The negative impact that LV has on the recruitment

Lateral violence also known as horizontal violence, incivility, or bullying has been a phenomenon researched for over three decades according to nursing researchers. This paper aims to discuss the impact that lateral violence has on the work environment, teamwork, self esteem, and patient care. Lateral violence is a phenomenon that has negative implications on the nursing profession due to the fact it can be avoided but still occurs. Lateral violence has been defined as any unwanted abuse or hostility within the workplace and “nurses covertly or overtly directing their dissatisfaction inward towards each other, towards themselves, and toward those less powerful than themselves (Griffin, 2004, p. 257), as quoted by (Roberts, 2014, p.36). According to Sanner-Steieh and Ward-Smith (2014) “lateral violence may be verbal consisting of persistent criticism, gossiping, yelling or berating; or nonverbal consisting of behaviors of undermining, sabotaging, clique formation, failure to respect privacy or confidences, and assigning unmanageable workloads”. Lateral violence has negative implications that directly affect patient care because it creates high incidents of nurse turn-over which results in hospitals often being short staffed, the nurses on shift work longer hours with bigger caseloads, and the patient’s are the ones who experience an unsatisfactory quality of care. Studies estimate that 44% to 85% of nurses are victims of lateral violence and up to 93% of nurses report

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.

Most nurses don’t wake up in the morning with the intention of bullying their coworkers and likely don’t even realize when they are participating in destructive behaviors. The article “Sadly Caught up in the Moment: An Exploration of Horizontal Violence” (2012) provides a list of behaviors that constitute horizontal violence. The article discusses findings of how prevalent these behaviors are and how surprised the nurses surveyed were to discover that they themselves had either participated in or been victim of almost all

Moreover, another type of violence which nurses experience is horizontal violence. Horizontal violence is described as “hostile, aggressive, and harmful behavior by a nurse or group of nurses toward a co-worker or group of nurses via attitudes, actions, words, and behaviors” (Becher & Visovsky, 2012, p. 210). Horizontal violence not only involves nurse-nurse violence but includes nurse-physician and nurse-supervisor violence. The perpetrator displays behaviors associated with horizontal violence which may include refusing to lend assistance, criticizing, intimidation, gossiping, name-calling, and ignoring (Becher & Visovsky, 2012). The American Nurses Association sets the expectations for nursing standards. According to the American Nurses

Civility in the work place, or the lack thereof, has been identified as a growing problem within many professions in today’s society. Often referred to as lateral violence, this occurrence is no exception in the nursing profession. It is also known as ‘horizontal violence’ or ‘workplace bullying (Coursey, Rodriguez, Dieckmann, & Austin, 2013). In this evidenced-based paper, information will be provided in an effort to identify causes of lateral violence in the workplace and how to encourage civility.

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.

Violence in the workplace is something that has been around for many years but it is hard to know exactly when it became a recognized national issue as there is limited data and reporting on the subject. The American Nursing Association (ANA) established a Code of Ethics that is used to guide how nurses do their job as well as how to treat others in the workplace. In the 2001 code of ethics, the first three provisions laid out four statements that pertain to ethical behaviors and disruptive behavior. The first statement is “1.5 Relationships with Colleagues and Others: The principle of respect for persons extends to all individuals with whom the nurse interacts. The nurse maintains compassionate and caring relationships with colleagues and others with a commitment to fair treatment of individuals, to integrity preserving compromise, and to resolving conflict” (Lachman, 2015, p.138). This statement implies that nurses should not participate in any activity towards coworkers or any individual

Nursing is a profession founded on caring, compassion and collaboration. I believe that all nurses come to work with good intentions, but sometimes something happens along the way. “Horizontal violence can exist to some extent in any institution, with the potential to disrupt the integrity of the nursing profession and ultimately compromise patient care” (Becher&Visovsky, 2012, P. 213). I think that its important for us as professional nurses to acknowledge the “existence of horizontal violence, confront horizontal violence, and take appropriate actions to mitigate it (Becher&Visovsky, 2012, P. 213).

Of all professions, nursing has been consistently ranked as the most honest and ethical of all professions polled. In fact, this year our profession was ranked the most honest and ethical for the thirteenth year in a row (Sachs & Jones, 2014). But for our consistent rankings, there is a quiet festering problem that has been growing among us; a problem that has largely been disregarded as too infrequent to worry about or just paying your dues. The problem is “not new to nursing, but has been long ignored as an issue critical to the profession. As a result, the behaviors have been allowed to contaminate the work environment” (Longo, 2013, p. 951). Only in the last decade has substantial research been conducted across many cultures that shows this problem to be a widespread and serious problem (Ekici & Beder, 2014, p. 24). This problem is workplace bullying, also referred to as lateral/horizontal violence or vertical violence. This bullying, while seemingly trivial at times, can have broad and devastating consequences. Most notable of these effects of the consequences are employee productivity, mental and physical health, retention of staff, facility costs, and most importantly, patient safety (Ekici & Beder, 2014, pp. 25,31; Gaffney, DeMarco, Hofmeyer, Vessey, & Budin, 2012, p. 2). Bullying can be experienced by anyone at any level of the work place: graduate nurses, experienced nurses, charge

The purpose of this integration paper is to educate about lateral violence in the professional setting, more specifically within the nursing profession. Lateral violence is defined as “profound and pervasive source of occupational stress with physical and psychological and organizational consequences.” (Cervalolo, D). Types of lateral violence include rude comments, verbal attacks, condescending language, sexual misconduct, lack of collaboration, professionally attacking a person integrity and reputation, blaming others for your own mistakes in front of others and family members of the patient, withholding important information and other non-professional behaviors (Blair). These types of behavior can decrease the morale and making the working environment difficult to work in. “1 in 6 healthcare workers will experience some form of lateral violence”. (Blair).

Nurses have many roles that have allowed them to provide safe healthcare for patients every day. The nurse is responsible for treating patients with all types of problems, including abuse. In addition to treating victims and their families who experience violent situations, nurses have also become victims themselves in the workplace. “Workplace violence is any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the work site” (United States Department of Labor). Workplace violence against nurses has become an epidemic in today's society because nurses are failing to report violent attacks due to reprimandation from superiors, there is a false idea that violence is “just part

Workplace incivility is a significant problem and can be found in nurses working across all areas of practice. But it is often overlooked and unreported. It is so prevalent, that this type of behavior is considered normal and accepted in nursing culture. Damaging fact is that nurses have been role modeling this behavior in full view to the novice/ student nurses. In a 2006 survey conducted by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), 24.1% of respondents stated they had been verbally abused by a peer (Luparell, 2011).

Workplace bullying is a comprehensive issue which not only affects a person’s dignity, but also causes psychological and emotional problems (Park, Cho & Hong, 2015). The results of horizontal violence will be job dissatisfaction, physical and psychological stress. The recipient’s of HV will be having sleeping difficulties, low self-confidence and low enthusiasm, feeling isolated from other staff, show depression and utilize lots of sick leave (Longo & Sherman, 2007). On a study conducted on several new graduate nurses, bullying and HV are referred to as power games, ‘bitchiness’ and hierarchy which has been connected to the concept “eating their young” (Kelly & Ahern, 2009). They further stated that this destroyed the new graduates’ view of nursing as a noble profession. The experienced nurses often select the new graduates for bullying, because they are the juniors within the institutional hierarchy (Rush, Adamack, Gordon & Janke, 2014).