Lateral violence and aggression in professional environments

¶ … Violence and Aggression

It is unfortunate that even in a caring industry, like that of healthcare; nurses are being made to feel incompetent and even being harassed by their fellow co-workers. Lateral violence is a serious problem within many modern healthcare facilities, and it is one which often does not receive as much attention as it should. Even I have personally witnessed situations where lateral violence has led to an ineffective care environment that can only lead the patients to suffer from a decreased quality of care.

As defined by Lamontagne (2010), lateral violence among nursing staff is where body language, communication, or threats are conducted in a negative manner. As a result, nurses on the staff suffer, as do the patients. Intimidating communication between co-workers or staff is often the most prevalent form of lateral violence in the health care context, but modern examples do also show threatening body language and even overt harassment among nursing staff. Unfortunately, this results in potentially serious psychological injury to the nursing staff that is impacted by the methods of lateral violence unrestrained within a healthcare setting. Some facilities that witness such lateral violence among staff members are plagued with low moral within the nursing staff, which can have a huge impact on the quality of care available in the facility setting. From an administrative point-of-view, lateral violence can lead to increased costs due to high turn over rates. When nurses feel threatened they may opt out of the profession or the facility, leaving the administration to once again have to foot the bill of re-staffing and training to keep the facility running smoothly. This problem is essentially taking away from the effectiveness of the nursing staff, which reduces the quality of care for the patients. When nurses are clearly distracted or distressed while working with patients, there is a deterioration of how beneficial that care can actually be for each individual patient. Ineffective teamwork directly leads to poor quality care for patients.

Overall, the article is intriguing. It is not often that one connects what one sees in healthcare centers to the thought of actual violence. Upon reading the article, I know that I have personally experienced situations of lateral violence in the outpatient rehabilitation center that I personally work in. At first, I thought such behaviors were typical hazing, or just the actions of bitter people; yet, after reading Lamontagne's 2010 article I can now understand the full seriousness of the issue. Intimidating communication is definitely present within my work place. Student nurses and new staff have often been the victims of bullying that is coming from actual nursing and facility staff that have been on location for long periods of time. Such situations have been witnessed by not only the student nurses working within the facility, but also by the patients and senior staff members