I hope this is not true about colleague violence

[porscheXN]

Our professor gave an article (published in 2005) to read. We will discuss it tomorrow. It is about colleague violence in nursing. There is a passage in it: 

Theories abound Researchers have proposed several theories to explain horizontal violence.

"Low self-esteem. Most nurses are women, and studies consistently show that women have lower self-esteem than men. In general, women undervalue their work and themselves. But people with low self-esteem become angry more easily, manage their anger poorly, and lash out at others."

Which studies? I have searched on Google, Google scholar, yandex. There are a few scientific articles and they are old. There are news articles and they are old, for example, an article from 1987.

Most of the articles that I found, are discussing low-esteem and women who are (insert any bad thing, such as abuse, violence, illness...) 

None of them are saying "low-esteem because they are women."

I have found some news articles and all of them are from trash media like oprah, atlantic. They are manipulating by directly assuming it as scientific information.

"Nurses show violence because they are women and women have low-esteem." 

I am disappointed at this stigmatizing. 

[Wuzzie]

Yep. Get ready to hear things like “nurses eat their young” “old nurses are going to eat you alive” “lateral violence” “bullying”.  Take it with a grain of salt. Does it happen? Of course it does. But it is no where near as prevalent as they are going to try to make you believe and it isn’t isolated to nursing. Don’t go looking for it and you likely won’t find it. If it finds you, come here and we’ll help you work through whatever is happening but be aware that we don’t typically sugar coat things which some unfortunate posters defined as us bullying them. If you’re overreacting we’ll let you know. If you’re not we will support and hopefully provide you some tools to improve the situation. From your post I don’t think you’re the type of person who will allow themselves to be eaten. You clearly think for yourself and you’re already critically thinking like a pro!! ?

[JKL33]

While it was never wrong to have sought to improve collegiality in this (or any) profession, this is another classic example of how an idea has been co-opted and pretty much turned into something else for someone else's benefit.

Violence? Violence???!

You know?

The first time I ever heard this verbiage in this context I felt it was an obvious cover for some other agenda, that's how stupid it sounds on the face of it. We are talking about people's fairly normal and fairly common human reactions to poor treatment, after all. I consider this whole approach to this topic as something that has gone wrong and now amounts to gaslighting. Blaming people and making them believe they are the (source of the) problem.

Guess I will stop there. Hope you plan to find out what studies this article references so nebulously. Should be a good discussion. ???

[Emergent, RN]

I think the era of blaming everything on low self-esteem has passed. It's such a pitiful part of psychobabble history.

[macawake, MSN]

2 hours ago, porscheXN said:

Our professor gave an article (published in 2005) to read. We will discuss it tomorrow. It is about colleague violence in nursing. There is a passage in it: 

Theories abound Researchers have proposed several theories to explain horizontal violence.

"Low self-esteem. Most nurses are women, and studies consistently show that women have lower self-esteem than men. In general, women undervalue their work and themselves. But people with low self-esteem become angry more easily, manage their anger poorly, and lash out at others."

Which studies? I have searched on Google, Google scholar, yandex. There are a few scientific articles and they are old. There are news articles and they are old, for example, an article from 1987.

Most of the articles that I found, are discussing low-esteem and women who are (insert any bad thing, such as abuse, violence, illness...) 

None of them are saying "low-esteem because they are women."

I have found some news articles and all of them are from trash media like oprah, atlantic. They are manipulating by directly assuming it as scientific information.

"Nurses show violence because they are women and women have low-esteem." 

I am disappointed at this stigmatizing. 

Aside from being semi-ancient, what type of article is this? Where was it published? Peer-reviewed? Does the article simply make the claim that ”studies consistently show...” without listing the references supporting that claim?

Perhaps the assignment isn’t really to discuss the article you were given to read, but rather a way to teach you to critically think and always assess the quality and credibility of sources... That would be my hope at least.

 

[JBMmom, MSN, NP]

 Are violent people more likely to have low self-esteem or high self-esteem? - ScienceDirect (tried to post a link to an article)

Workplace Violence, Anxiety and Self-Esteem in Nursing Staff of Primary, Emergency and Intensive Care Units on the Island of Crete (hilarispublisher.com)

(PDF) The Concept of Self-Esteem in Nursing Education and its Impact on Professional Behaviour (researchgate.net)

The Effect of Self-Esteem, Bullying, and Harassment on Nurse Turnover Intention (waldenu.edu) (This is someone's thesis, there may be links)

I found the links above after a quick search, there are certainly data out there surrounding the issue. I think drawing a cause-effect relationship is difficult, but you can often make research findings fit your theory.

 

Edited because I thought they were pasted as links, but they weren't. Those are the search results. 

[porscheXN]

Thanks for the answers. I am relieved. We will discuss this article in Epidemiology class to make a statistical analysis. The thing is our professors emphasize patient safety and caring errors, but these warnings are a constant stream for us; errors, patients, laws...as an example that they gave us this article to review. 

The paper has no citing on that passage, I checked again. It only gives four cited sources for its other context. I will find and read them soon.

JBMMom, I have downloaded the papers, except ScienceDirect, and will read them. I want to know about this. It will help me. 

[JKL33]

You may also want to review some of what the ANA has posted/published:

https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/advocacy/state/workplace-violence2/

https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/work-environment/violence-incivility-bullying/

https://www.nursingworld.org/~49d6e3/globalassets/practiceandpolicy/nursing-excellence/incivility-bullying-and-workplace-violence--ana-position-statement.pdf

My opinion is that the way they pull the various concepts together (last linked document above) comes to a sum total that is inappropriate and has given employers even more ammunition to impugn nurses and blame them for their reaction to poor treatment that has been accelerating. Suddenly someone's frustrated sigh or facial expression is being thrown into a big bag with "workplace violence?" As if it is the workplace violence? That's ridiculous. It's as if someone (who had already risen to their level of incompetence) had the unthinking idea to convey the maximum importance of this issue by using exaggerated terminology that sounds very bad. Because otherwise we might not have understood that there are important reasons why we should want to increase kindness and decrease incivility in the workplace.

Employers eat this up. Their idea morphs into a thing where no matter what you are told or how you are treated or what level of repeated disregard you endure, your job is to operate only in "kind" mode - and even that will be judged according to others' definitions and others' preferred interests. I think the whole thing is so manipulative it could make anyone's head spin. And, as nearly always, it's an issue that overall is significantly important but has become perverted and used for nefarious purposes. Smart people would have foreseen this and been more careful with words and position statements.

If it seems like I'm getting off-topic, I'm not. This OP is being asked to discuss, in a nursing context, "research" showing that women have poor self-esteem and therefore perpetuate violence in the workplace.

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

OP- this is a great discussion. And your willingness to question and learn instead of knee-jerk react will serve you very well.

[chare]

22 hours ago, macawake said:

Aside from being semi-ancient, what type of article is this? Where was it published? Peer-reviewed? Does the article simply make the claim that ”studies consistently show...” without listing the references supporting that claim?

[...]

Not peer reviewed, no in-text references cited, and lists four "selected references" at the end of the text.  

Leiper, J. (2005). Nurse against nurse: How to stop horizontal violence. Nursing, 35, 44-45. https:/dx.doi.org/10.1097/00152193-200503000-00037

[Guest856929]

On 12/19/2020 at 8:20 AM, porscheXN said:

"Nurses show violence because they are women and women have low-esteem." 

I am a guy and I find this logical (or lack thereof) conclusion absolutely reprehensible. I am glad that you looked more into it other that being subject to academic indoctrination.