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

[MauraRN]

Definition of bullying; Any behavior that negatively impacts the physical, financial or mental health of another.

It is not failing to smile or engage in social chit chat, it is serious and deadly behavior.

[AtheistRN, ADN, RN]

@Ruby Vee Waving the bully flag, to use your term. It's nothing to do with being left out of extracurricular activities or negative feedback on nursing interventions. It has more to do with daily snide comments, criticisms regarding appearance, gossiping about someone in front of that person, public verbal aggression, threats, refusing report from an off-going nurse because they couldn't possibly have anything of value to report, etc. None of these have anything to do with bettering patient care and serve no purpose other than to hurt.

I have seen it from younger to older and vice-versa.

It's not a buzzword. The tight-lipped stance only serves to perpetuate this kind of nonsense. Don't tell, 'cause it's not that bad. I prefer to not take any extra sh** from people not demented, in extreme pain, or dying.

I am not weak. I am strong, and choose to speak out. Of course, bullying/lateral-horizontal-workplace violence/ hostile work environment, can be over-diagnosed, just like anything else.

Sexual harassment really happens, too. I've heard nurses say that mds used to pat nurses' asses, so what's the big deal? Forget all that. No one is entitled to be sh**ty to me.

[AtheistRN, ADN, RN]

OCNRN63 said:

And your comments belittle the bullying that we older nurses have experienced. New nurses don't have any special claim to this problem; it happens at all phases in nursing.

They didn't mention age groups. You are correct; older nurses get harassed just as much as the new ones.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

AtheistRN said:

I'm waving the bully flag, to use your term. It's nothing to do with being left out of extracurricular activities or negative feedback on nursing interventions. It has more to do with daily snide comments, criticisms regarding appearance, gossiping about someone in front of that person, public verbal aggression, threats, refusing report from an off-going nurse because they couldn't possibly have anything of value to report, etc. None of these have anything to do with bettering patient care and serve no purpose other than to hurt.

I have seen it from younger to older and vice-versa.

It's not a buzzword. The tight-lipped stance only serves to perpetuate this kind of nonsense. Don't tell, 'cause it's not that bad. I prefer to not take any extra sh** from people not demented, in extreme pain, or dying.

I am not weak. I am strong, and choose to speak out. Of course, bullying/lateral-horizontal-workplace violence/ hostile work environment, can be over-diagnosed, just like anything else.

Sexual harassment really happens, too. I've heard nurses say that mds used to pat nurses' asses, so what's the big deal? Forget all that. No one is entitled to be sh**ty to me.

I'm not sure why you're calling me out here. But I'll bite.

My point in my original post was not that older nurses are "bullied" too, although that is certainly true. My point was that one had best be careful when one calls for "No tolerance for bullies" because some of one's own behaviors could possibly be called into question as bullying.

Dementia is perhaps an excuse for poor treatment of others, but I'm not so sure about extreme pain and dying. Certainly extreme pain could be used as an excuse for sharp responses to questions or even impatience, but not inappropriate statements about appearance, public verbal aggression, etc.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

calivianya said:

To tell you the truth, this post made me really sad. I agree with you that it is not important what other people say about you as long as you know you're doing a good job. I had an experience with that last night, and I just brushed it off and won't mention it at work, though my family got an earful about exactly what I thought about it this morning! Still. I think the main difference between my generation and yours is that I don't think it's acceptable to have to develop calluses to cover the blisters. I shouldn't be in an environment that blisters in the first place. We are all adults, regardless of how old each of us is, and we should act like it. I shouldn't have to get used to the older nurses rolling their eyes at me. You shouldn't have to get used to younger nurses rolling their eyes at you. And absolutely none of us should have to deal with physicians giving us attitudes, because they don't have the authority to reprimand us because they are NOT in our chain of command, no matter how much they think they are.

I have worked somewhere that took lateral violence seriously before. It's not a unicorn. It's possible, but it's only possible if employees and managers care enough to make it happen. When people don't care enough about the way they are treated to want to make their work environments better, nothing is ever going to get better. Change doesn't happen if no one works for it.

If you don't tolerate disrespectful behavior, you won't be treated disrespectfully -- at least not more than once. When you care enough about yourself to make that happen, change happens.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

or YOU get fired for being the outlier. It doesn't always work, Ruby ...it just doesn't!

Ruby Vee said:

If you don't tolerate disrespectful behavior, you won't be treated disrespectfully -- at least not more than once. When you care enough about yourself to make that happen, change happens.

[calivianya, BSN, RN]

Ruby Vee said:

If you don't tolerate disrespectful behavior, you won't be treated disrespectfully -- at least not more than once. When you care enough about yourself to make that happen, change happens.

I don't tolerate disrespectful behavior, and generally speaking, I don't have problems with my coworkers. However, I do have coworkers that are more timid or more reluctant to stand up for themselves than I am. Some people are naturally shy and vulnerable, and I don't believe it's good for the profession of nursing as a whole to put the responsibility of preventing violence of any sort, verbal or physical, on the victim. We work as a team, don't we? We should stand up for a culture where attacking others is not acceptable in the first place, not one that teaches its members that it's okay to be bullied because it will eventually stop if you just toughen up. That sounds eerily to me like the logic, "Well, if you'd just worn a longer skirt and hadn't had the nerve to walk on the street at night by yourself..." and that bothers me. Why is victim blaming okay in some circumstances but not others? I'm all for it not being okay, ever. I think it's perfectly acceptable to expect to be treated like a human being by your coworkers, and I think any organization where that's not the norm has incompetent management.

[Guest757854]

morte said:

or YOU get fired for being the outlier. It doesn't always work, Ruby ...it just doesn't!

Thank you thank you thank you! !!!!!!! Like like love this!

[Guest757854]

calivianya said:

I don't tolerate disrespectful behavior, and generally speaking, I don't have problems with my coworkers. However, I do have coworkers that are more timid or more reluctant to stand up for themselves than I am. Some people are naturally shy and vulnerable, and I don't believe it's good for the profession of nursing as a whole to put the responsibility of preventing violence of any sort, verbal or physical, on the victim. We work as a team, don't we? We should stand up for a culture where attacking others is not acceptable in the first place, not one that teaches its members that it's okay to be bullied because it will eventually stop if you just toughen up. That sounds eerily to me like the logic, "Well, if you'd just worn a longer skirt and hadn't had the nerve to walk on the street at night by yourself..." and that bothers me. Why is victim blaming okay in some circumstances but not others? I'm all for it not being okay, ever. I think it's perfectly acceptable to expect to be treated like a human being by your coworkers, and I think any organization where that's not the norm has incompetent management.

Like like love again! !!!

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

morte said:

or YOU get fired for being the outlier. It doesn't always work, Ruby ...it just doesn't!

Nothing ALWAYS works. But the majority of the time, if you don't tolerate bullying, you won't be bullied.

[macawake, MSN]

calivianya said:

I don't tolerate disrespectful behavior, and generally speaking, I don't have problems with my coworkers. However, I do have coworkers that are more timid or more reluctant to stand up for themselves than I am. Some people are naturally shy and vulnerable, and I don't believe it's good for the profession of nursing as a whole to put the responsibility of preventing violence of any sort, verbal or physical, on the victim. We work as a team, don't we? We should stand up for a culture where attacking others is not acceptable in the first place, not one that teaches its members that it's okay to be bullied because it will eventually stop if you just toughen up. That sounds eerily to me like the logic, "Well, if you'd just worn a longer skirt and hadn't had the nerve to walk on the street at night by yourself..." and that bothers me. Why is victim blaming okay in some circumstances but not others? I'm all for it not being okay, ever. I think it's perfectly acceptable to expect to be treated like a human being by your coworkers, and I think any organization where that's not the norm has incompetent management.

This is one of those posts that I wish I could like 100 times!

[morte, LPN, LVN]

I, as well!

macawake said:

This is one of those posts that I wish I could like 100 times!