i have had a very interesting experience with the aacn's "healthy work environments" initiative. it really does seem that one just had to "name it to claim it!"
i have posted an excerpt from the aacn's on-line and journal article on lateral violence - has anyone had any experience with these behaviors (below)?
how much of your practice is impacted by issues such as these!?
i know that, in retrospect, i have had a role or two that i am not proud of! however, i resolved that i would be a part of the solution - not a part of any problem. so, what do you recognize?
have you been a victim or a villain?
how do we stop this now?
please share your feeling, comments, observations or experiences.
thanks!!!
and
practice safe!
from the june 2007 edition of : critical care nurse
manifestations of lateral hostility
lateral hostility, bullying, horizontal violence, and the like may be conveyed in a nearly endless variety of forms that denigrate a nurse's professional dignity. some of those expressions identified in the literature include the following3,14,17:
* backstabbing, gossiping
* belittling gestures (deliberate rolling of eyes, folding arms, staring straight ahead or "through" when communication is attempted)
* constant criticism, scapegoating, fault-finding
* elitist attitudes regarding work area, education, experience
In my experience as nursing student I encountered more nasty nurses than nice ones.I learned one thing dont make friends at work and dont ask too many questions,just go about your bussiness,you are not there to make friends.
Well, I do agree with the part of not making friends at work. They are coworkers. I never associate with people I work with. Im polite and friendly if I run across them at the mall or whatever. But I do not party with them, or anything else. The few times I have done otherwise, I have always lived to regret it. Either they took advantage of me at work or others talked about us. I have a wonderfull life doing it my way.
Are nurses this horrible towards one another that they cant even trust one person in a building of how many nurses, to be friendly with? Im not saying you should trust everyone, but if you treat everyone the same because of something one person did to you, arent you creating a predjudice to your own kind? And if so what kind of work environment is that? No one has anyones back and everyone jogs to their own corners at lunch time. I hope I dont work with people like that.
Specializes in telemetry, long-term care, oncology.
One or two nurses went behind my back to the director to tell him they thought I was unsure of myself during a code. The director brought it up with me, without the anonymous nurse present. so I get to wonder who has a lack of confidence about my abilitites enough to tell the director, yet not me. I put it down to the director's lack of management experience. However, the work environment had become a hostile place for me. I was on to the next job within a month. (whatever you want to call it, the lack of support, silence, or openly patronizing to name-calling acts that uppity old nurses give the new ones leads to a not a fun place to work.) The manager who supports or tolerates this type of behavior is often intimidated by his staff and immaturely looking to join the clique.
I have been a victim to a lot of these things in my 5 years as a RN. Unfortunatley, I'm a fighter. And a I refuse to take any crap off of a coworker. This is not really good thing. I know. I've never been known to be diplomatic. But, I find that no one messes with my schedule and when I come to work I'm treated fair. I also expect everyone else to be treated fair while working the same shift as me. It doesn't take much for me to speak up for the person that isn't there that is being ridiculed by other staff. I just can't stand the back stabbing of nursing. If they do talk, it's not around me, and I can just go about my business. If they want to talk smack about me, I could really care less. They aren't the people I would want to hang around with outside of my job. I guess it's just a mind set. For the most part, I get along with whoever I'm working with that shift. What they say afterwards, I don't really give a rat's butt!
One or two nurses went behind my back to the director to tell him they thought I was unsure of myself during a code. The director brought it up with me, without the anonymous nurse present. so I get to wonder who has a lack of confidence about my abilitites enough to tell the director, yet not me. I put it down to the director's lack of management experience. However, the work environment had become a hostile place for me. I was on to the next job within a month. (whatever you want to call it, the lack of support, silence, or openly patronizing to name-calling acts that uppity old nurses give the new ones leads to a not a fun place to work.) The manager who supports or tolerates this type of behavior is often intimidated by his staff and immaturely looking to join the clique.
Well I don't know how long you have been a nurse or how many codes you have been in, but I can tell you that i have worked about a year and a half and I still have yet to be in a code and when I am, insecure does not begin to describe the way i will probably feel. If someone observes this and tells my supervisor, so be it. There are loads of situations I have been very insecure in and did not do as well as I have on the second or third such event. Security in life and death matters comes with exposure and practice. If they don't know that they don't know very much. I get along well at this point with most all of my coworkers, but every now and then some chick will peck at me or try to flog me verbally. What to do about it, but flog back. That is all there is to it. I will not allow anyone to get by with running over me.
I know lots of people talk behind my back because I don't fit the mold. The worst of the gossipers said the other night (under her breath) that I was a little wierd. I said clearly to her "Matilda, I never aspired to be regular!" She couldn't say a whole lot. She is a terrible gossip and likes to stir up trouble. She draws people in by being real friendly and then either forms an alliance as long as it suits her or a psuedo alliance or she just immediately starts being snarky to them. I have learned to laugh at her when she is funny, ignor her when she gossips and mix it with her when she is mean. She is very young and has been a nurse a couple of years, extremely book smart, appears to have decent skills and is extremely insecure, in my opinion. There is hope for her, but in the mean time, if you want trouble stirred up and feelings hurt, you can count on Matilda.
It is all about the patients as far as I am concerned and I will learn what I can from every situation that occurs, both interpersonal and professional. I try not to wear my feelings on my sleeve and try to treat others the way I want to be treated. I have also learned that it doesn't help to much to just ignore bullies all the time, you gotta give them some of their own medicine.
Mahage
The fairly new nurse with 57 years life experience
Regarding lateral violence, we need to remember that we cannot change anyone else's behavior. The only things we can change are our own attitudes and reactions. Having been a recipient of lateral violence at the workplace, I see myself in a lot of these posts. I've been in fairly healthy workplaces in which workers were stressed to their limits and unfortunately took out their frustrations on each other. I've worked in unhealthy, dysfunctional, even toxic environments in which hostility was condoned and encouraged by the nursing management. Sometimes I've asked myself what I've done to "deserve" lateral violence. Sometimes it HAS been something I've done, maybe a defensive attitude or a feeling of victimization. Sometimes it's simply been that I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I've been in abusive relationships at various times in my life. When I think about it, it comes as no surprise to me that while the personal relationships relationships I have now are healthy, my spidey sense hasn't always kicked in when I've been in potentially unhealthy work environments. In the last couple of years I've dealt with one nurse manager who was overly critical and gossiped about the staff behind their backs and another whose preferred method of communication was shouting and screaming. It pains me to say this but in both cases I cowered, just like I used to do with my abusive ex-spouse. Never again. No job, no relationship is worth being verbally abused by anyone. Never, ever again.
I left my verbally abusive spouse and have a healthy relationship with someone else. I also left the hostile workplaces. I am confident that while nursing is a stressful profession, I can and will find a healthy work environment the promotes positive, professional values. Whatever I have been through, I am not a victim. I am a survivor.
Specializes in telemetry, long-term care, oncology.
Thanks for the replies, I can fight back and do in my own way. Others may think I let people walk over me because I am gentle and kind. I have been around long enough to know what I want to live with and what I don't. I have been in an abusive marriage so I don't take any lectures about being careful about what I say and all that blah blah. I left a CCU because I wasn't interested in staying and trying to change their culture.
new nurses should be encouraged and supported indeed, it takes time to have confidence. I have had my time to build it and have been fired a couple times so really there's not much a person can do to me.
I makes me chuckle to read that people are so off-put by the terming of the behaviors described in the original thread as "violent". I also find it interesting that the majority of those who find fault with the term are those with many years of experience in nursing (not nursing students - the most prone of the nursing population to victimization) and it makes me wonder...
In my opinion, the term "violence" is incredibly accurate. Why? Because it is abuse. I'll say it again, it is abuse - psychological, emotional, social, and in some circumstances - physical and/or sexual abuse. Because full on physical violence in the workplace is not only easy to spot but easy to take disciplinary action against, these types of behaviors take the place of physical violence. In my mind (and in the minds of many psych professionals), the long term effects of both are uncannily similar. The only distinction perhaps being that physical wounds heal.
I have a hard time believing that educated, trained professionals don't recognize the severity and impact of those behaviors. To go so far as to describe a perfectly acceptable description of calculated malice as 'melodramatic' speaks to an obvious lack of empathy and - if the person making the description happens to participate in said actions - an acute sense of denial, if not edging toward sociopathy.
When I worked on a unit, the nursing instructor came to a meeting, and asked which of us would like to have a student nurse perform care for a patient we were assigned. She had more than enough volunteers!
It's important for any worker to feel they have the power to refuse an "extra" thing to consider. We can't refuse to come to work, we can't refuse our assignment or something off the wall that we're asked to do by doctors. When we have a choice, it's nice to know we can vote.
Personally I love working with students, and have many times. They relieve me of a lot of work, and I like to think that I've had a positive effect on someone's career in the making.
One or two nurses went behind my back to the director to tell him they thought I was unsure of myself during a code. The director brought it up with me, without the anonymous nurse present. so I get to wonder who has a lack of confidence about my abilitites enough to tell the director, yet not me. I put it down to the director's lack of management experience. However, the work environment had become a hostile place for me. I was on to the next job within a month. (whatever you want to call it, the lack of support, silence, or openly patronizing to name-calling acts that uppity old nurses give the new ones leads to a not a fun place to work.) The manager who supports or tolerates this type of behavior is often intimidated by his staff and immaturely looking to join the clique.
Something similar happened to me. We had a horrible, horrible code in inpatient dialysis (an area that has few codes; only BLS). It was the unit bully's pt, and IMO she dropped the ball by failing to recognize that the pt was going bad (she never called the RRT!) A chaotic code happened (not our fault, the code team was late and no doc showed up for a long time) and the pt died (probably would have anyway no matter how well the code was run since she had a PE). Anyway, the very next day unit bully jumped all over me for "abandoning her" during the code! Never mind I was right next to her, or in the unit having been asked to look after other pts, the whole time. After such a dramatic code with unexpected loss of life (this 49 y/o mother of young kids had just come in for a "routine" procedure) i got verbally abused by this horrible bully nurse (whose skills are mediocre at best).
Unfortunately, the manager is just like you describe: friends with the bully and wanting to be liked by her (although she was sympathetic to me after other nurses spoke up on my behalf and explained what really happened). However, I was suddenly off the schedule (I was PRN) and, as usual, the newest nurse (me) got thrown under the bus... I have since quit.
Just how long will lateral (and vertical) violence be tolerated in nursing?!
Iam46yearsold
839 Posts
Well, I do agree with the part of not making friends at work. They are coworkers. I never associate with people I work with. Im polite and friendly if I run across them at the mall or whatever. But I do not party with them, or anything else. The few times I have done otherwise, I have always lived to regret it. Either they took advantage of me at work or others talked about us. I have a wonderfull life doing it my way.