Nurse Bullies: A Plague On Our House

Sadly, there appears to be a desperate need for a continued conversation about bullying within the nursing profession. One would hope that the dawning of the 21st century would have seen a decline in such old school behaviors, but there are obviously those among us who haven ' t yet learned the lesson that collaboration and cooperation are the true keys to success.When bullying occurs between colleagues who are more or less within the same level of the professional hierarchy, it is also referred to as " horizontal violence " or " lateral violence " . For example, one nurse bullying another is considered lateral violence, although the bullying of a nurse by a physician is not lateral since the doctor ostensibly holds power, superiority or authority over the nurse.Bullying and harassment are an enormous problem in healthcare in the United States, and we hear from experts likeRenee Thompson andDr. Susan Strauss(frequent guests onRNFM Radio), that this is not just an American issue but a sad, worldwide phenomenon.In this post, I ' m not going to wax poetic about the various forms of bullying and harassment. That information can be found on a plethora of websites and in many scholarly journals and books that elucidate the problem much more clearly and concisely than I can.Rather, I ' d like to use this "bully pulpit" (with a grateful nod to Theodore Roosevelt) to pontificate on the fact that, for all of our work to elevate our profession into a glorious future, there are just too ...
Source: Digital Doorway - Category: Nursing Tags: bullying nurse nurse bullying nurse-nurse relationships nurses nursing Source Type: blogs