Workplace Bullying (Research Paper Sample)

Workplace Bullying
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Institutional affiliation
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Workplace Bulling
Abstract
Workplace bullying is an insidious, overlooked and detrimental practice common to most workers. Noticing that this is a form of harassment, the article by Yamada and J.D, reveals that the effects from such mistreatment are of a broader dimension. Noticeably, the well-being of an individual, social and familial relationship, job productivity and the overall workforce morale are at stake as workplace harassment takes a toll. Typically, workplace bullying refers to the continuous, malicious, health-threatening mistreatment of one employee by another or others. Illustratively, the article reveals the different forms of bullying which include a boss inflicting a subordinate, workers sabotaging the reputation of a colleague through talking ill of character or performance. Certainly, in any of its covert or overt varieties, bullying causes severe harm upon organizations and employees alike, causing physical, psychological injuries to employees. While bullying at a personal level saps morale and productivity from the workplace, financial, patient care, hospital reputation and legal ramifications are at a compromise as well. Accordingly, the article addresses the implications of bullying in the workplace through revealing its consequences on a multidimensional perspective.
Impacts on personnel
At a personal level, severe workplace bullying inflicts serious harm upon an employee. In essence, the most damaging behaviors of bullying include shouting, screaming, hostile glares, social exclusion among other intimidating behaviors (Yamada & J.D, 2010). When such bullying behaviors become intolerable, the targeted worker suffers from psychological effects such as mood swings, depression, stress, loss of sleep, and feelings of guilt, shame, and low self-esteem. Evidently, some targets have developed symptoms that are consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder. For the physical effects, high blood pressure, digestive problems, headaches, impaired immune systems and increased risk of cardiovascular illnesses are common. Consequently, the target nurse becomes erroneous and less productive on duty.
Similarly, co-workers who learn of or witness such bullying behaviors at the hospital setting may become fearful or experience anxieties that affect their productivity. Targets of severe bullying often bring their experiences home with them, affecting social and family relationships. For example, targets suffering from clinical depression are likely to be consumed in their situations and become less attentive to their children’s emotional needs.
Impacts on Patient Care
Good working environment is central to quality patient care. Given that, bullying at the hospital leads to intimidation, psychological and physical detriment on nurses, their productivity is at a compromise. In essence, bullying lowers the morale of nurses making them less performance oriented because they are likely to adopt retaliatory behaviors such as absconding duty in the absence of the bully (Yamada & J.D, 2010). In addition, because of stress and feelings of shame or guilt, bullied nurses are erroneous in decision-making, thus compromising patient care.in most cases, bullied nurses are harsh to patients, a situation that intimidates the patients making them lose trust with such care providers. Consequently, the patients hide some information regarding their sickness because of fear.
Impact on Hospital Reputation
Bullying of nurses at the workplace is counterproductive to the reputation of the hospital. Considering that bullied nurses are victims of psychological and physical torture, they may be out as agents of sabotage (Yamada & J.D, 2010). For example, bullying fosters nursing mistakes leading to negative patient care outcomes. Moreover, the nurse-patient relationship deteriorates in such a stressful workplace environment .furthermore, because of poor quality patient outcomes, incidences of litigation cases will increase. All the aforementioned incidences give a general negative picture of a hospital to the public. Thus, patients will keep off from seeking for the services of the hospital because of the negative reputation.
Financial Impacts
Financially, workplace bullying costs a hospital both directly and indirectly. Some of the direct costs include an increase in medical, employees’ compensation claims, and litigation costs that arise because of abusive work situations. Indirect costs encompass the impact of employee engagement and morale, which may put off customers, thus compromising profits. Wastage of hospital resources such as drugs because as a retaliatory act by bullied nurses increases the operational costs of a hospital
Legal Ramifications
As of late 2...