Break the Silence: Report Bullying

[SEABOATSHELLS]

The importance and impact of bullying in the workplace are significant to nursing in many ways. Bullying threatens the very foundation, of not just nurses, but its business ethics, structure, and productivity. Nursing is a sensitive structure that demands teamwork, dedication, and drive.

The rise of bullying threatens to create barriers in nursing that will result in a negative way. This impact bullying has on nurses impedes their ability to function professionally by interfering with teamwork, morale, and personal health. Prevention is the only way to stop or eliminate bullying. An anti-bullying program must become an integral part of nursing training by deeply embedding the need to identify and prevent this destructive action in the workplace.

A nurse takes the oath to do no harm to others. Nurses dedicate their hearts and minds to practice faithfully in their profession. The qualities a nurse must possess are to be compassionate, sympathetic, and empathetic towards others. These qualities are especially important for nurse managers so they can guide and mentor nurses along with their career path. A nurse manager who lacks these qualities and does not support their nurses creates problems in their working environment.

An unspoken problem is nurse manager bullying. The nursing issue is that nurse manager bullying can cause intimidation and psychological harassment amongst their employees. This harassment can cause the employee to have devastating psychological, physical, emotional, and social outcomes.

It is time in the nursing profession to break the silence that nurse managers who bully nurses create an unhealthy work environment that can result in health problems or cause nurses to resign. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and suicide do occur in staff who are bullied by their co-workers and/or nurse managers.

It is time to be proactive as nurses and identify bullying behaviors and report them immediately. Look at your co-workers who are being treated poorly reach out your hand and guide them to get counseling so they can heal from this.

Here are some basic suggestions on what to do if bullying occurs in the Workplace:

1. Send the employee who is being bullied to Employee Health to talk with an appointed staff member who can guide them in where to get counseling.

2. Remove the employee immediately from the toxic environment and place them in a better working environment so no form of retaliation can occur.

3. Employee Health should report bullying to the Bullying Task Force. The Bullying Task Force is composed of a Peer Counsel Committee who will review each case. This Peer Counsel Committee is important because it does not consist of management who possibly would not be as objective as a peer.
4. Implement a Bullying Support Group. This is important in the recovery of staff who are bullied. The Bullying Support Group will utilize a twelve step program much like Alcoholic Anonymous.
5. Have employees fill out a survey online that can be filled out anonymously and sent directly to the Associate Directors office.
6. Have Human Resources track all staff who leave a position and have them fill out a bullying survey online.

Exit interviews should be conducted on all employees leaving their jobs. This interview should be kept confidential so it does not interfere with or impact new job opportunities. Surveys should be done that ensure confidentiality in the data collected. In order to collect honest and accurate data, it is extremely important to provide confidentiality. Surveys that ask identifiable data such as age, work level, and sex are often a deterrent for employees to complete the survey honestly. A person's identity can easily be assessed by this information. All of the data collected can be utilized to help strengthen the laws, guidelines, and policies to provide a safe working environment and to stop bullying

Educating hospital staff on the importance of looking for suicide and PTSD symptoms is extremely important. Nurse managers need to be educated that treating their employees in a caring way will help to retain them. They will realize happy employees are more productive and tend to stay in their jobs. Cruelty will cause the human spirit to fail. Nurse managers that bully allow the human spirit to fail in the employees they bully. The human spirit is affected by the consequences of bullying which are physical and psychological changes in the person that is bullied. Jean Watson's Human Caring Theory should be taught to all employees to restore caring in the health care system so bullying behavior can be stopped.

Educating and providing resources to new employee nurses on bullying, the Whistle Blowers Act, and sexual harassment should be incorporated into new employee orientation. All staff would also benefit from a yearly review on these topics. Hopefully, this will keep nurses aware of proper workplace behavior and we can retain nurses. There are programs available for this problem, but many nurses are not aware this issue exists nor how to identify bullying. There are several others that provide information on books, education, and counseling available for anyone who is bullied.

There are no governmental laws that prohibit workplace bullying. Governmental laws addressing workplace bullying should be in place. There needs to be a law acknowledging that bullying exists. Once legislation is established then health care organizations will have zero tolerance in allowing this behavior. Strong institutional policies need to be in place in every healthcare organization to prevent bullying in the workplace.

Report Bullying; Break the Silence; Save Your Co-Workers Life

Sarah Yuengling RN MSN

[nurseforlife24]

That's it. I'm out.

[SoldierNurse22, BSN, RN]

Personally, I don't like the term "bullying". It's a buzz word and nothing more, were you to ask me. Everything that legitimately falls under the category of "bullying" has other terms--typically legal terms with legal consequences--associated with them: physical violence, threats, intimidation, verbal/sexual/physical harrassment/abuse, etc all have preexisting categories of offenses to fall under.

Then you've got stuff that's kinda in the gray area, but covered by the wonderful term "lateral violence". Like Dr. X calls and yells at you for about 10 minutes because the labs you drew hemolyzed before they could run tests. Lateral violence, no doubt. Threats? Intimidation? Probably not. Just very rude, nasty behavior from a professional who should know better. And behavior that can get you fired, I might add.

Then there's the low-level stuff. When you get down to complaints like, "Mrs. X didn't say hello to me when I walked in today. She's being a bully!", I lose interest. Perhaps Mrs. X. doesn't like you and she's avoiding you. She's certainly entitled to that opinion. Perhaps she was unintentionally rude because she was busy doing something else. Either way, if all she did was not say hello, I say strap on your big boy/girl panties and move on. I've worked with people like this before, and you can get them called on not being a team player, endangering patient care by being noncommunicative with the team, etc. That's a much more legitimate reason to fire them than "they hurted my feewings!"

Life will hurt your precious feelings. Suck it up and drive on. For everything else, the preexisting system for handling bad behavior in the workplace seems to be working fine.

As an aside, agree with LadyFree, OCNRN and all the PPs who discussed the disparity between how bullying is defined when it's an older nurse acting on a younger one ("she rolled her eyes at me") versus a younger one acting on an older one ("need a chair, grandma? Retire already!"). Big, huge double standard that seems to gnaw on peoples' behinds without their knowledge, AEB this thread.

[NurseLewis]

I am so happy to see this post. I am a new nurse and I have worked in the medical field under various titles. I can remember wanting to be a nurse so bad. My first position was at a SNF. Most of the nurses were plain rude. Always leaving work for to handle and when I asked questions, they would say, "so you dont know how to do it". Hmmmmm....if I did, I wouldn't bother asking someone so rude and unprofessional. I was asked to do things that's was not familiar with while these nurses sat at the nurses station playing on their phones. Needless to say, I quit. I refuse to put my license in jeopardy. After that I began a new job and realized that I'm not the only nurse that has experienced these type of situations. Some will say that it's normal...how so? When nurses are spending time bullying and behaving as children, they are missing what's truly important...the client/customer/patient. Nurses should value one another, not put one another down. The medical field is forever changing and growing. And there's always room to grow and something new to learn. Lets put a stop to this so called acceptable behavior by pointing this behavior out and taking a stand. I truly did become a nurse because I like helping people, because I like to help care for others, because I like knowing that my patients know they can count on me, because I know I'm fulfilling my purpose. Not very many nurses I've met can say they love being a nurse. I can. What about you?

,

[merrywhiterose]

Our DON has 2 RN drinking buddies/best friends. Those 2 RN's seem to think they are better than the other nurses because they've brown-nosed their way into being buddies with the DON. So the RNs try to act like the other LPNs & RNs don't know anything when in reality the 2 RNs are new to the nursing profession. They mentally bully others by pitting everyone against each other.

[merrywhiterose]

I graduated from RN school with our last DON. She had it out for me from day 1 when she took the DON position. She wrote me up for the tiniest things & would point out mistakes at our meetings & even mention my name! She took every opportunity to try to make me look bad. Another RN wrote a letter to the owners of the facility about what was going on. The DON let off for about a month, then started in again. After about a yr. on the job, she couldn't handle the job so left & it's been fantastic after that.

[SEABOATSHELLS]

Wow, This situation happens more than people know. I did a small study of 10 people who were bullied and a common issues was the boss was either the bully or friends with the bully. I also learned that the boss may also be friends with their boss. Often you have to report it at a higher level because of this.

There is a big movement to have a workplace law against bullying. Dr. Namie (Workplace Bullying Institute) has been spearheading this for years and hopefully a law will be passed soon. There are already laws in place in other countries.

Thank you so much for sharing.

[AOttinger]

Altra said:

My two cents:

To confuse "obnoxiousness" with "bullying" does not help to deal with either. Just because someone is obnoxious does not equate to bullying. Not everything that you find unpleasant is bullying.

I'm so tired of this victim mentality.

I agree. It's a matter of simple mutual respect with another employee. You don't have to be their friend, like everything they say or do, OR even respect them. You simply have to be there to take care of patients and get on with your life. That being said, I will agree that sometimes bullying DOES occur. I had another employee do it to me personally. I took it to management right away and it was dealt with appropriately. I believe that sometimes we need to overlook some things that are irritating, but there certainly is a difference between "irritating" and "bullying". I think sometimes you need to step up and identify the behavior that is occurring. Looking someone straight in the face and saying, "I don't like how you are treating me," will stop most behaviors. In my situation, it did not, and I was forced to take it to management.

[Overland1, RN]

The word "bullying" has been shoved down our throats by the media, and we all know that so many folks live and breathe based on what is in the media. Add to that the peepz who want to be protected and taken care of by some unknown entity, and the scenario is ripe continued and increased claims ofvictimization. We, as nurses, can make or break a patient's life; are we not better than all the dependency that we are seeing here?

Soon, inadvertently neglecting to return a greeting in the hallway will be included in the constantly (i.e., ad nauseum) revised definition of the term.

[Carolina Southpaw]

Quote

"She has also complained about her job and the fact that she is on thin ice with her bosses. She has also shared that she has multiple job offers with WAY higher salaries. To me, sharing all of that information is just unprofessional and to belittle people like that is uncalled for. She has said some other things that have made me want to report her to hr, but I'm not high up enough in the food chain for it to matter."

With all you have said, I think you do have enough clear-cut evidence to go to HR. This should protect your anonymity and if she is on thin ice with her upper mgr, this may be exactly what they need to help her out the door! Collect up the emails, if you have anyone else on the unit, who is also being attacked or has emails, try to go as a collective.

That being said, she sounds completely stressed out and not prepared to be a mgr. I can tell you if she is doing this, her boss is probably doing it to her. This does not excuse her behavior, but it may explain it and sometimes that can make the rest of us feel a bit better by knowing for a fact that it wasn't us. Good Luck!

To All, I would like to share that there is much confusion regarding the definitions of the various types of negative workplace behaviors. I am currently working on my MSN capstone research study on this very topic and have completed an extensive lit review. The definitions are available, but we all tend to use these terms interchangeably.

I would like to share a portion of my participant information sheet with you all in the hopes that it may further all of our understanding about this topic and allow us to nurture ourselves and each other. I know that when I started researching, I thought that I was above any involvement in the spiraling effect of this issue. I now know that I was wrong. There is a huge difference between incivility and bullying. 

I wish you all the best!!

Definition of terms:

Civility- An authentic respect for others, as evidenced by sincere willingness to engage others in conversation and seek common ground with one’s time and presence (Clark & Carnosso,2008, p.13).

Incivility - A lack of regard for others,which encompasses all forms of rude, disruptive, and/or intimidating behavior;can overt or covert; and is characterized by being strictly psychological in nature; interferes with one’s work and has an ambiguous intent to harm(Felblinger, 2009; Harris, 2011; Guidroz et al., 2010).

Discreet Incivility are behaviors that include: arriving late or leaving meetings early, sending emails without a greeting, use of acceptable words, but with harsh tones, negative body language, superficial listening, lack of collaboration, lacking empathy, requesting input from others when decisions are already made, and dismissing or ignoring co-workers thoughts, input or concerns, among others (Felblinger, 2009).

Overt incivility are behaviors that include: the“silent treatment” or giving the “cold shoulder”, eye rolling, sarcastic comments, rude or obnoxious behavior, losing one’s temper or yelling at someone, failing to support a co-worker, public reprimands, snatching an item out of a co-workers hands, blaming team members when something is wrong,blaming others in front of a patient or patient’s family member, and throwing items into a workspace, patronizing others, taking credit for another’s idea or work, slamming the phone down, among others (Becher &Visovsky, 2012;Felblinger, 2009).

Bullying -Uncivil behaviors which are repetitive, occurring at a minimum of twice a week for at least six months;with an increased intensity when compared to incivility, and intent to harm,and a focus on an individual or group by the instigator in which the targets find it difficult to defend themselves. Behaviors include: throwing items directly at someone, taunting, slandering, undermining someone’s work or reputation, setting an individual up for failure, racial/ethnic slurs, verbal abuse, continual (or cyclical) criticism, encouraging others to turn against aco-worker, intimidation, stalking, among others, and can culminate into physical violence (Felblinger, 2009; Fevre & Lewis, 2012; Guidroz et al.,2010; Hogh, Hoel, & Carneiro, 2011; Namie & Namie, 2011; Yildirim,2009).

Horizontal Violence -refers to uncivil behavior, as it relates to behaviors between co-workers or peers, as opposed to those in supervisory positions, and without specificity to assignment of duration,focus, or intent (Becher & Visovsky, 2012; Felblinger, 2009).

Mobbing -refers to the bullying acts of one or more individuals who systematically attack the work and character of another individual in the workplace until that individual is in a helpless and defenseless position and is held there by continued activities which occur at least once a week for at least six months with the potential risk of expulsion for the target .(Leymann, 1996)

Instigators - are individuals who are using any uncivil or negative behavior whether intentional or unintentional and whether or not the behaviors are targeted at any particular individual or group.

Targets - are individuals who are the recipient of uncivil behavior whether or not intentionally targeted.

Bystanders - is the term used to describe individuals that witness or have awareness of negative workplace behaviors,which are targeted at an individual or group whether intentional or unintentional, while an active bystander is one who takes steps to address or recognize the behavior (Scully & Rowe, 2009).

References

Becher, J., & Visovsky, C. (2012). Horizontal violence in nursing. Medsurg Nursing, 21(4), 210-232.

Clark, C. (2013). Creating and sustaining civility in nursing education, Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International Publishing.

Clark, C., & Carnosso, J. (2008). Civility: A concept analysis. Journal of Theory Construction & Testing, 12(1), 11-15.

Fevre, R., & Lewis, D. (2012). Why ill-treatment at work is so hard to change. People Management, June, 30-35.

Guidroz, A., Burnfield-Geimer, J., Clark, O.,Schwetschenau, H., & Jex, S. (2010). The nursing incivility scale development and validation of an occupation-specific measure. Journal of Nursing Measurement, 18(3), 176-200.

Harris, C. (2011). Incivility in nursing. Nursing Bulletin, 8(22), 16-20.

Hogh, A., Hoel, H., & Carneiro, I. (2011).Bullying and employee turnover among healthcare workers: A three-wave prospective study. Journal of Nursing Management, 19(6), 742-751.

Leymann, H. (1996). The Content and development of mobbing at work. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 5(2),165-184.

Namie, G., & Namie, R. (2011). The bully-free workplace. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Scully, M., & Rowe, M. (2009). By stander training within organizations. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, 2(1), 89-95.

The Joint Commission. (2008). Behaviors that undermine a culture of safety. Retrieved from www.jointcommission.org/SentinelEvents/SentinelEventsAlert/sea_40.htm

Yildirim, D. (2009). Bullying among nurses and its effects. International Nursing Review, 56(4), 504-511.

[SombraRN]

The term "eating the young" needs to be discarded. Really, nurses eat the young, the old, the opposite sex, people different than themselves, not a member of a clique, and whatever else allows individuals and those who associate with them in this practice to engage in. Time to call it by its right name.

I agree with some who are concerned that every disagreement between nurses should not be labeled as bullying. However, some published literature notes that up to 70% of nurses will leave a job or be terminated directly because of bullying by co-workers and/or management. This is seriously damaging to a nurses career and personal well being. It has also been noted in literature that a nurse enduring bullying is more likely to make a mistake and that becomes potentially harmful to patients. It really is a serious issue. Hopefully, nurses will begin to learn how better to respect each other in the profession.

I recall one incident early in my career where a resident criticized a physician on rounds. The attending pulled him aside and stated to him, "don't ever criticize a colleague in public again." Too bad nurses can't seem to get that concept.

[sneeds]

I don't like it when I ask questions and I'm treated like an idiot with belittling tone of voice. Like, I'm not an idiot but if I have a question, I'm gonna ask... I don't care how basic. I learned to tell myself, hey you're probably gonna get heat for calling or asking but so what?.... I'm developing a tough skin. If charge or ANM mentions I ask too many questions and question my ability or confidence, I will tell them after I get a new job that this isnt a good match because the place in which I work is detrimental to my future and I can't stay in a place that gives me negative feedback when I give it my all and have great outcomes. But dont use it to pay me less or keep me under heel. Not happening. I totally agree about never criticizing in public. This was done to me too. It's unacceptable and a liability to the hospital. That day made me think about nursing in general. How unprofessional is that? No other job I ever had did this.

[EricaAntonioBacnis]

Are they allowing transgender males and females to practice here in the philippines? This has been my problem since i am a butch, there might be problems regarding sexuality when i apply to practice as a nurse. Can anybody help me please?!