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Nurses have choices when dealing with bullies. They can remain victims or take an empowering approach, learning to be assertive and seeking help when they need it.
Bullying has been identified as a problem within nursing.1 Nurses say it can result in reduced job satisfaction, unhappiness at work, premature resignation or departure from the nursing profession and mental ill health.
Bullying is also a problem in wider society, especially with the advent and proliferation of social media where people, sometimes thinking they are anonymous, act as "keyboard warriors". They attack people via internet platforms where communication is instantaneous and can be directed towards specific individuals.
Bullying takes many forms. It can come in the guise of put-downs, stand-over techniques and also exclusion and ritualised ignoring Bullying can also come from any level of the team; it could be a peer, a junior or senior staff member. Bullying can also come from patients. This is very concerning in areas where there are high levels of aggression towards caregivers.2
So, why is bullying a problem, specifically in nursing? Is it that we are the oppressed professional group (in relation to medical doctors) and that the internal conflict is a sign of our own fears in addressing this power imbalance? Is it the organisation's or the profession's cultural ethos? Is it a result of high workloads and stress levels, or individual factors such as not "liking" the look of someone? Or is it a combination of all of the above, and more, that we need to address? The cause of "horizontal violence" is difficult to pinpoint3 and challenging to overcome.
Teams where bullying or negative communication styles (bitching!) is an accepted part of the workplace culture are impaired when it comes to patient care, as these attitudes can hurt good relations and the ability of professionals to communicate appropriately and effectively. This can lead to errors, omissions and mistakes in the organisation and delivery of patient care.4
So what can we do about this? The answer could be to look at what is going on in the communication patterns of bullying and to think about how we can change these patterns to neutralise and prevent bullying tactics from socially "infecting" people and teams in the first place.