Bullying in the Nursing Profession and it's Impact on Healthcare (Essay Sample)

Bullying in Nursing and its Impact on Healthcare Student’s name: Institutional Affiliation: Bullying in Nursing and its Impact on Healthcare Introduction Every person has experienced bullying at some point in life either as a bully, victim or a bystander. In the United States, more than a third on of the workforce has been a victim of workplace bullying. The harmful implications of bullying are far reaching affecting the well-being of both the individual staff and the collective organization (Yildirim, 2009). Victims suffer an array of negative health consequences such as increased stress levels, anxiety, and depression. They also experienced reduced morale in the workplace, decreased job satisfaction and reduced productivity costing organization millions of dollars (Rocker, 2008). As a result, companies have endeavored to create a work culture that is free from any form of bullying and violence. However, organizations are never neutral but rather a means for crystallizing distinct differences. Consequently, workplace bullying has emerged as a common phenomenon in the contemporary world. The unprecedented increase in workplace bullying around the world calls for the establishment of effective mechanisms that allow zero-tolerance to this dehumanizing behavior. The healthcare profession experiences some of the highest levels of workplace bullying. As with many other professionals in the health sector, nurses also experience a significant share of workplace bullying that discredits the delivery of quality healthcare services by dedicated nurses. The American Nurses Association (2015) estimates that 31 percent of nurses experience bullying at in their workplace. Most of the victims are new nurses who are still in the process of familiarizing themselves with the healthcare workplace. Bullying causes severe adverse outcomes not only to the affected nurse but also to the patients who are recipients of care. Bullying in nursing has been shown to lead to job dissatisfaction, poor retention, reduced motivation and productivity. It also prevents the delivery of quality care to patients leading to poor outcomes (Rocker, 2008). Therefore, it is imperative that nursing leadership in clinical settings strive to promote a healthy and safe work environment for nurses as this will improve the quality of healthcare delivered. This paper presents the problem and effects of workplace bullying in the nursing profession and offers potential solutions on how to eliminate the practice for the improvement of the quality of healthcare delivered to patients. Bullying in Nursing Workplace bullying refers to any repetitive mistreatment comprising of harmful actions such as verbal abuse and threats intended to humiliate or intimidate a worker and interfere with his/her to job performance (American Nurses Association, 2015). Bullying actions are extensive and include those that harm, undermine or degrade a worker. For example, hostile remarks directed to an employee, verbal abuse, threats, taunts, intimidation, and withholding much-needed support (Rocker, 2008). Specific organizational factors such as power distribution, policies, procedures, tolerance to bullying over time and informal groupings are crucial precursors to workplace bullying. Mostly, bullying results from abuse or misuse of authority. A real or perceived gap in status cause top employees to bully their juniors (top down bullying). Top down bullying by organizational managers allows acceptance of the practice as a workplace norm. Employees may also gang up against their employers (bottom up bullying) or colleagues (horizontal bullying) (Rocker, 2008). All in all, bullying behavior is driven by the perpetrator’s need to feel in complete control of a person regardless of the pain and suffering endured by the victim. Bullying affects a broad range of staff in the nursing profession. The culture of the healthcare setting has most of the times portrayed nurses as “handmaidens” in the patriarchal society. As a result, the balance of power is never in the favor of the nurse (American Nurses Association, 2015). This has acquiesced nurses as servants of the physicians and other medical personnel thus predisposing them to bullies. Nurses usually experience various bullying actions such as physical violence, verbal abuse, and mobbing as well as sexual assault. Verbal abuse has the highest rate with 48% of nurses reporting to have experienced it. Working the night shift increases the risk of sexual harassment. Perpetrators of these actions are mostly senior and experienced nurses (24%), nursing unit in charges (17%), nurse managers (14%).” This had led to the famous phrase that “nurses eat their young” (Dellasega, 2011). Physicians (8%) are also responsible for nurse bullying (Vessey, 2009). Newly licensed nurses are more vulnerable to bullying before they get socialized to the healthcare work environment. There are several bullying acts directed to nurses. The actions are usually insidious and take place for an extended period. They include continued criticism, sarcasm, demeaning comments, false accusations, and complaints, being set up to fail, isolation, verbal and physical abuse (Yildirim, 2009). Constant criticism and humiliation are the most frequent acts of nurse bullying experienced in the United States. The bullying actions take place in various nursing care delivery areas. According to Vessey (2009), “bullying occurs most frequently in the medical, surgical care (23%), critical care (18%) emergency areas (12%), operating room/post anesthesia care unit (9%) and obstetric care (7%) areas.” Most nurses (67%) report experiencing bullying from their supervisors and coworkers (77%). Some nurse supervisors are always harsh and correct inevitable mistakes done by juniors publicly. They also withhold much-needed support to the newer nurses making it difficult for them to become effective in their work. Additionally, nurse coworkers are abusive to each other thus sabotage the nursing profession and reduce the quality of patient care. Impact of Nurse Bullying on Healthcare Bullying has serious safety and health issues and can have a lifetime physical and psychological effects on the victim (Rocker, 2008). Nurse victims of bullying are terrorized, belittled, excluded from the rest of the healthcare working force, and denied essential rights and resources. This has significant physiological and psychological impact on the victims which affect patient care. Bullying threatens the well-being of nurses. Nurses who continuously experience workplace bullying are more likely to have decreased morale to work and job satisfaction than respected ones (Yildirim, 2009). This translates to poor job performance and reduced productivity since such nurses spend more time on leave and miss work more often. This lowers the standards of care delivered to patients threatening their health as such nurses are unable to provide competent care (American Nurses Association, 2015). Nurse maltreatment also leads to the erosion of professional competence with affects patient care negatively. Additionally, nurse bullying creates a dangerous work environment for other healthcare providers endangering their lives and that of the patients. Bullying also leads to physical symptoms such as headaches, disturbed sleep patterns, and gastrointestinal problems among nurses. It also precipitates psychological conditions such as anxiety, increased stress levels and depressive episodes. These symptoms frequently advance to post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in some nurse practitioners (Rocker, 2008). Such physical and psychological effects have a negative impact on the quality of care delivered. They impair judgment and substantially reduce the performance of a nurse. For instance, a study conducted on registered nurses discovered that 7% had medication errors as a result of intimidation (American Nurses Association, 2015). Research has also shown that nurse bullying increases errors related to patient safety leading to an increase in the incidence of patient falls, higher rates delayed medication administration and more cases of patients developing pressure ulcers due to lack of frequent turning. Therefore, nurse managers should develop ways of eliminating bullying in their work areas as it decreases staff confidence and competence which adversely affects the quality of patient care and outcomes in the clinical setting. Additionally, bullying destroys the self-confidence and image of a nurse forcing them to resign their position eventually and move to other professions. Bullying is one of the primary reasons as to why nurses leave the profession in large numbers (American Nurses Association, 2015). As a result, nurse bullying in the workforce has a significant contribution to the current nursing shortage experienced. It creates feelings of defenselessness which significantly reduces the motivation to work as a nurse (Yildirim, 2009). As a result, most nurses leave their faculty positions and move to other professions with less bullying. Studies prove that 60 percent of new nurses typically leave their first position within six months as a result of some form of verbal abuse, harsh treatment and lack of adequate on the job support and training (Rocker, 2008). Others take early retirement to avoid the bullying actions. Additionally, nurse bullying also causes burnout forcing nurses to take some time off work forcing the working nurses to take care of additional patients. All these have led to a significant shortage of nurses increasing the nurse patient ration in the healthcare setting and reducing the quality of nursing care. Additionally, nurse bullying contributes to unhealthy work environments that ultimately hurt the quality and safety of healthcare given to patients. It is important to have a safe working environment as it promotes the physical and psychological well-being of wor...