Leadership Ethics Assignment: Nurse to Nurse Violence (Essay Sample)

Leadership Ethics: Nurse to Nurse Violence
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Introduction
The nursing profession is guided by a specific code of ethics and professional standards. Nurses are expected to provide quality care that centers on the patients. To achieve this, nurses are expected to form collaborative relationships with their colleagues, patients and their families, and the administrators of the nursing facilities (Vessey et al. 2009, p. 299). Nurses provide care to patients in order to relieve them of pain. Workplace violence is an unfortunate trend that has emerged among nursing professionals in the recent past. Nurse-nurse violence or horizontal hostility is defined as “hostile, aggressive, and harmful behavior by a nurse or group of nurses toward a co-worker or group of nurses via attitudes, actions, words and/or behaviors” (Becher and Visovsky, 2012, p. 210). Nursing violence is characterized by bullying, backstabbing, name-calling, gossip, intimidation, criticism, sarcasm, blaming, isolation, belittling, sabotage, fabrication of lies, and exclusion among others (Beecher and Visovsky, 2012, p. 210). Nurses are expected to be guided by a code of ethics. However, engagement in horizontal violence violates this code of ethics (Aitamaa et al. 2010, p. 469). The failure of nurses to act in accordance with the code of ethics requires that nursing leaders step in to protect both the nursing professional and patients in his/her care. Ethical leadership exemplified by nursing leaders is crucial in ending horizontal violence.
Key Strategies Pertinent to Ethical Issue
There are several strategies that nurse leaders can use to end horizontal violence among nursing colleagues and hence maintain a work environment that is healthy and conducive. These strategies include nurse leaders committing to be role models and proactively enforcing a change in culture at a nursing unit, using professional codes of ethics to solve nurse-nurse violence, and both nursing administration and nursing personnel collaborating more frequently and consistently in addressing issues that arise in the unit.
Nurse leaders have no obligation but to lead by example by not being perpetrators of the nurse-nurse violence. Vessey (2009) identifies senior staff nurses or nurse managers as one of the perpetrators of bullying (Vessey et al. 2009, p. 305). A change in culture at the nursing units involves providing sound leadership, organizing mentoring programs to staff, and starting activities that build collaboration among the nurses (Vessey et al. 2009, p. 304).In addition, enforcement of culture involves taking the initiative to post rules that guide relationships at worksites in order to promote team building, supportive relationships, and professional role socialization (Chaboyer et al., 2001, p. 530). All these elements require that nursing managers develop transformative leadership skills that are needed to creatively counter workplace violence among nurses.
Secondly, nursing managers are supposed to use codes of ethics to solve issues concerning nurse-nurse violence (Aitamaa et al., 2010, p. 466). Nursing managers receive ethics education and training and this strengthens their understanding of ethical problems and hence they should be better prepared to resolve them by using the code of ethics principles (Aitamaa et al., 2010, p. 479). Nurse managers who undertake ethics training after they graduate are well positioned to use codes of ethics in resolving the conflict between nursing values. Nursing professionals will violate codes of ethics mainly due to ignorance of the contents of the code or lack of training or just blatantly disregarding them. Therefore, to be able to solve ethical problems such as nurse-nurse violence, understanding of the code of ethics becomes important. Nursing managers should participate in ethics training after they graduate so as to be able to decipher ethical problems more easily and use the code of ethics in solving these problems (Aitamaa et al. 2010, p. 477).
The third strategy is for nursing managers and nursing personnel collaborating more frequently and consistently in solving nurse-nurse violence. Nursing managers should be close to the personnel who work below them in order to understand any problems they are facing and purpose to solve them before they snowball into horizontal violence. Managerial leadership sends a message to the nursing personnel that the managers are committed to maintaining particular standards (Coursey et al., 2013, p. 106). The nursing managers should create an environment that requires everyone to behave in a respectful and courteous manner. This is possible after managers collaborate with staff closely to understand the type of environment they want.
Analysis of Evidence
Coursey (2013) reports of a survey of 600 nurses in south-eastern United States where a large number of open-ended comments showed that leadership that is ineffective worsened nurse-nurse violence. Staff members were resentful when managers made attempts to relate closely with nursing personnel after a lateral violence incident had occurred (Coursey et al., 2013, p. 106). This shows collaborations between nursing managers and nursing personnel need to be frequent and consistent even in nurse-nurse violence matters. In addition, nursing managers are supposed to be able to recognize and admit the occurrence of viol...