Critique Qualitative Critique

Qualitative Critique

Nursing is a difficult career with a large learning curve made more stressful by the tendency of senior nurses to “eat their young.” This concept implies that experienced nurses choose to degrade or bully new nurses instead of guiding them with wisdom. In fact, “verbal abuse is the most common form of disruptive behavior experienced by professional nurses,” (Budin, Brewer, Chao, & Kovner, 2013, p. 308). The same study noted that abuse eventually leads to lower morale, absenteeism, psychological damage, and even affects patient care. The 2013 Workforce Analysis of Nursing reported that there are 2.8 million nurses in the US and that 1/3 of those nurses are over age 50 (Health Resources and Service Administration, 2013).

The research itself seems unbiased and thorough. That said, because the researchers did not interview subjects themselves and could not hear inflections in their stories it is impossible to completely apply their findings to a generalized population. The researchers mentioned that they acknowledged their own bias, but did not state what those biases were.

Auditability

Overall, the research process was well organized and logical. However, the researchers should have included the 30 themes they used to categorize quotes. Not doing so requires future researchers to establish their own themes, which may be different than those found in this study. They did include partial quotations that represented the data well. They also discussed their procedure at length.

Fittingness

It is evident by the use of more than one industry to discuss workplace bullying that many professions could find this information useful. Nurses especially are more likely to engage in subtle bullying due to the nature of the job. It is unlikely that the typical form of bullying: shouting, aggressive actions, and violence are used with regularity in nursing practice. It is more likely that nurses will ostracize, use “double speak,” or label their bullying tactics as helpful for the organization (Cox Dzurec et al., 2014). It is important in this field to recognize that prosody has just as powerful effect as the words choices