Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management Selected Issue: Bullying in Nursing

Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management Selected Issue: Bullying in Nursing

Just as other workplaces, nurses experience bullying in healthcare settings from each other, from patients, or from their leaders. Bullying refers to the act of intimidating or hurting another person maliciously or intentionally. Within the nursing context, bullying is the act of intimidating or hurting another nurse intentionally. Workplace bullying for nurses is adversely impactful for the nurses considering the impact the bullying has on their emotional and mental health, as well as patient health outcomes.

A noteworthy impact of nursing bullying on patients is the limited medical care they receive from the nurses, which reduces their chances of achieving positive health outcomes. One of the most common forms of bullying is physical aggression among nurses. Physical aggression as a form of bullying could cause the nurse physical injuries, which incapacitates the nurse professionally. When nurses are unable to attend to their functions physically, there develops a nursing shortage. Consequently, the available nurses have to cover the injured nurse’s shift, hence increasing their workload. Increased workload could lead to poor healthcare services offered to patients because of fatigue, hence leading to negative health outcomes for the patients.Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management Essay

Another impact of nursing bullying on patient health is the fact that patients may take longer to recover from their illnesses because they have lower satisfaction rates, especially after witnessing nursing bullying. According to a study by Al-Ghabeesh&Qattom (2019), nursing bullying leads to lower patient satisfaction which negatively affects them because they may feel that their preferred nurse is a bully or is bullied, hence, lowering their expectations about the healthcare organization, and their healing process.

To add to these consequences, nursing bullying affects patient health because of a high turnover rate caused by the uncivil workplace. Nurses who experience bullying in a specific healthcare setting are likely to limit their engagement and move to better employment opportunities and friendlier workplaces (Griffiths et al., 2018). Therefore, the organizations with high incidents of bullying tend to report a high employee turnover rate. A high turnover rate lowers patient satisfaction, as well as creates a nursing shortage. Consequently, a nursing shortage is detrimental to patient outcomes because of the lower quality services provided because of the increased workload for the available nurses.Effective Approaches in Leadership and Management Essay

Professional Standards in Addressing Bullying in Nursing

            The nursing professional standards are important in the profession because they outline the expectations on the competent nursing care that patients should receive in the nursing process. In addressing the issue of bullying in a healthcare organization, nurses should follow the nursing Standard IV on collegiality, which requires that the nurse interacts with peers and colleagues, and maintains compassionate and caring relationships with their peers and managers. Therefore, the healthcare organization management should ensure that all nurses are civil and intervene through conflict resolution whenever there is a bullying incident. The management should also apply this standard by enacting policing that outlaw bullying, and prescribe severe punishments for bullying that include suspension or termination of employment for the errant nurse.