Essay On Hazing And Lateral Violence

“Nurses eat their young.” It is an aged saying in nursing which describes the hazing and lateral violence which frequently occurs in the workplace. The victims of this bullying are usually new graduate nurses or nursing students. New graduates start their careers at the bottom of the proverbial totem pole; spending much of their time trying to learn the ropes and gaining experience as nurses. To the more experienced nurses they may appear to be easy targets with their “deer in the headlights” faces; believing the newbies are too frightened to fight back. Certain nursing schools, which will remain anonymous, use similar boot camp- like mentality while training their student nurses. The students at these schools remain fearful of their nursing

Surprisingly, nearly 100% of the participants have either witnessed or been a victim to such lateral violence in their workplace and/ or schooling. More than half reported witnessing this behavior directed at the newer nurses or nursing students. Similar evidence ran rampart all over the internet. “If you Google horizontal violence, the entire first two pages of results include information regarding nurses. Similarly, if you Google horizontal violence and nursing, 1,460,000 hits are received” (Stokes, 2010, p. 13). Nursing forums are filled with posts about this particular topic and scholarly search engines provide a myriad of articles in regards to horizontal violence. Many of the victims voicing their unfortunate experiences on these forums and articles were newly graduated nurses and studying

The Joint Commission can turn their “suggestions” into mandatory obligations of any health care facility. Facilities can make education on lateral violence a mandatory continuing education topic not only staff nurses, but all staff members; from doctors to janitors. Schools and health facilities can implement a zero-tolerance program in relation towards bullying in the workplace, whereas any staff that speaks or acts condescendingly towards other staff members will be reprimanded for their behavior. Assertiveness training can be provided for new graduates so they are able to defend themselves and leadership training for veteran nurses on staff.

One surprising idea for a possible solution was provided by one of the survey participants. His idea was to recruit more males into nursing. This nurse’s view was that male and females have very different behaviors in the workforce. Floors with a good balance of males and females will, almost always, display a distinctly different interaction between co-workers and is often less “gossipy.” Although, unproven, and very controversial this particular idea does spark an interesting