Lateral Violence in Nursing
Pamela A. Jangro
Southern New Hampshire University
Abstract
The concept of lateral violence (LV) in nursing has been the topic of research for many years. It is a contradiction that nurses, whose basic role is to "care for others" are often know to "eat their young". LV in nursing has existed for many years and still exists despite ongoing research and education. Often new graduate nurses are the target of LV as an "initiation" into the field. LV is carried out through bullying, verbal threats, physical threats and sabotaging to name just a few pathways. The consequences of LV are low self esteem, depression and the consequences impact patient care.
Lateral Violence in Nursing: Introduction
Lateral violence (LV) is defined as acts of aggression that are committed against one nurse from another nurse. LV is shown through unkind and antagonistic behaviors that occur among nurses within a shared work environment. The most common expressions of LV are verbal abuse, undermining, withholding information,
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The United States has laws to protect citizens from sexual and racial harassment in the workplace but nothing to protect from lateral violence (Sheridan-Leos 399-402). Changing behaviors is the first step. Nursing management must acknowledge and address LV as it occurs. Management should provide education regarding LV and its impact on nursing to create awareness. Many schools have instituted zero tolerance bullying policies which would be helpful to institute in nursing as well. Managers are responsible to build morale, support nurses and provide a good example of model behavior as well as instituting strict policies regarding abuse. Sheridan-Leos referenced six principles written by Thomas (2003) to assist is eliminating lateral
Nurse horizontal violence towards new nurses and nursing students includes methodical, unwelcome or unprovoked behaviors with the intent to upset, control, humiliate, harm, or segregate (Hutchinson, Vickers, Jackson, & Wilkes, 2006). Horizontal violence can be furtive and shrewd (such as withholding information or spreading gossip) as well as obvious and direct, such as reproaching in front of other staff, false complaints, or threatening body language (Hutchinson et al., 2006). Other forms of the experience, described both in nursing and non-nursing literature, include bullying, mobbing, intimidation, and aggression (Farrell, 2001). Bullies form cliques and engage in repetit...
The paper will address the problem of nurse hostility toward each other. It will address the etiology of the problem, and suggest some possible solutions or therapy to the problem. It will be discovered if truly preventive programs such as violence-prevention programs
The trauma related to negative behavior can afflict the healthcare environment on many levels, from creating a hostile work environment in which job performance is affected, by increasing job turnover and causing nurses to leave the profession altogether. The Joint Commission states that in the United States 65.6 million workers have experienced or witnessed bullying, psychological harassment affects 38 percent of healthcare workers, and 44 percent of nurses are impacted by this behavior (The Joint Commission, 2016). Inclusively, this behavior can influence the way nurses care for their patients, staffing levels, and the healthcare organization’s
The majority of the articles reviewed found that education on regcognizing and addressing lateral violence was the key to decreasing the its incidence. The difference in the articles is when the education should take place; Ebrahimi, Negarandeh, Jeffrey, and Azizi, (2016) conducted a study on experienced nurses who either committed workplace violence or had witnessed it against new nurses. The small interview style study consisted of questions discussing why the participants felt the violence occurred on new nurses. At the conclusion this study reccommended preparing the experienced nurse on how to support the new nurses, providing education to the new nurses on how to deal with workplace violence, and should problems arise how to help the staff resolve
Now a days, in the healthcare field the nurses are known to prevent, promote and improve the health and abilities of patients, families and communities. It is very heartbreaking to hear that in this honorable profession exists violence, bullying which is among not only nurses but also other healthcare professionals. According to the article, Reducing Violence Against Nurses: The Violence Prevention Community Meeting, violence is defined as any verbal or physical behavior resulting in, or intended to result in, physical or physiological injury, pain, or harm. In the healthcare field the term that is used when there is violence between coworkers is called horizontal violence. This is a term that is continued to be used but some hospitals have replaced it with the terms bullying or lateral violence. Horizontal violence is violence between nurses and it explains the behavior nurses have toward their coworkers and other healthcare professionals. This type of violence interferes with working together as a team and communicating between coworkers, which are things that are needed to promote and care for others.
Many registered nurses define horizontal violence differently because being a nurse they have seen many type of horizontal violence throughout his or her career. Horizontal violence defined as bullying or mistreatment of a group or individual physically, verbally and psychologically (Ahrens, 2012). Some examples that would be consider physical would be sexual misconduct. Verbal violence would be rude comments or cussing at one author. In addition, to psychological violence would include being fussed at in front of patients and or their families by a co-worker for doing something wrong and nurses purposely withholding information from another nurse, which causes patient’s needs not to be met. The horizontal violence in the work place puts lots of stress on nurses especially registered nurses (R.N.) . Nurses who tolerate horizontal violence tend to have depression, low self-esteem, missed days from work, become fatigued, burnout, causes hospitals, or clinics to have nurse ret...
Nurses are caring by nature. Nurses care for family members while at home, community members who may be neighbors, church members or friends from school and sports with children in common; however, nurses are known to display uncaring attitudes towards each other. When nurses are discourteous and disrespectful towards one another this may be known as workplace incivility. Incivility is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “the quality of state of being uncivil and a rude or discourteous act” (n.d.). Alexander (2017) related incivility to the events of the 2016 United States election as “rude and impolite behaviors that may be manifested when people feel fear or mistrust” (p. 79). Healthcare is subject to the same negative influence through communication between healthcare providers, educators and patients.
It has various negative effects which are persistent in nature, and the individual victim realizes the behaviour as bullying (Wilson, 2016). Bullying is associated with physical and psychological problems among nurses leading to absenteeism, poor performance, low job satisfaction, and increased turnover (Ganz, et al., 2015). The issue of bullying among nurses further affects the entire health care team including patient outcomes and health care costs due to the declining level of nurses’ performance (Becher & Visovsky, 2012). Although bullying exists in the nursing work place, they are silent in nature, and goes undetected (Becher & Visovsky,2012). Hence, identifying and managing workplace bullying needs efforts of individual facing bullying and support of the
According to (Abdollahzadeh, 2016), the issue of incivility in nursing can be defined as “low intensity” deviant behavior with the intent to harm the target. Nurses are subjected to incivility at a higher rate than other job fields, and this concern is one that has an impact on the mental health and well-being of nurses and can lead to a reduction in job satisfaction and employee recruitment and retention
Workplace bullying is increasingly being recognised as a serious problem in society. Reports from the general media and professional press suggest that there is increasing evidence that the scale of bullying, harassment and violence amongst health care staff is widespread (UNISON, 2003). Chaboyer, Najman, and Dunn (2001) explain that although nursing in Australia is now considered a profession, the use of horizontal violence, bullying and aggression in nursing interactions has been identified as a serious problem. Levett-Jones (as cited in Clare, White, Edwards, & van Loon, 2002) explains that the recipients or victims of bullying within the nursing profession are often graduate nurses, with 25% of graduates reporting negative experiences. Bullying behaviour often renders the workplace a harmful, fearful and abusive environment and has a devastating effect on the nurse, healthcare team and patient. This essay will discuss the issue of bullying within the nursing profession, with a particular focus on the experiences of graduate nurses. The contributing historical, social, political and economic factors will be explored in order to better understand the origins of this trend. The subsequent impact of bullying on nursing practice will be analysed and recommendations for practice, supported by current literature, will be provided.
Therefore, this position statement is relevant because these abuses can be seen in day-to-day healthcare environment. The effects of violence in nursing can be harmful to the proper function within a workplace. It can be damaging to the nursing profession and patient care. According to (Johnston et al., 2010, p.36), workplace violence is “spreading like a ‘superbug.’” Studies have shown, that lateral violence, nurse-on-nurse, has been one of the highest incidence of violence within the workplace. Also, statistics have shown that lateral violence has one of the most emotional impacts on an individual. This will be further discussed below. For these reasons, it is important for healthcare workers to validate the detrimental effects violence can have in the workplace, and be prepared to combat and prevent workplace violence.
Incivility in nursing Incivility is an issue that has been going on in the health care field among the staff. Incivility is a rude and negative behavior or attitudes towards other staff, that can leads to threat if not taken care right away. An example of incivility would be making jokes of other regarding their religious of ethnicity. Nurses have to quit their jobs because of incivility and not telling anyone about it (Luparell, 2011).
These characteristics of a nurse manager show how their leadership plays a role in their position in the nursing field. Without this position in the nursing structure, it would be very difficult to produce positive results in providing optimal patient ca...
Nurses should be mindful of clients who are aggressing for other reasons that are stimulating their violent behavior;
This particular chapter will provide a rationale for performing a literature review strategy based thesis which is associated to the frequency of verbal aggression in mental health inpatient settings in London and also how mental nurses manage verbal aggression with the use of non-physical techniques for instance de-escalation methods. This will provide the aims and also the objectives and the organisation of this dissertation. According to (Cowen et al 2003), the disclosure of Health Care Professionals to violence and aggression from patients in their daily practice, and in particular verbal aggression makes the National Health Service an unappealing work setting. This experience has caused psychological, physical and also spiritual damages in its victims, (Stubbs and Dickens, 2008), causing in the needs of the Nurses to be able to successfully managing verbal aggression. Consequently, this will make both recruitment and the maintenance of staff challenging, (Department of Health, 1999) and has further resulted in the formation of the zero tolerance policies introduced towards patient aggression.