Lateral Violence in the Workplace - Essay Example

"Lateral Violence in the Workplace" is a perfect example of a paper on care. A big majority of my co-workers are aware of workplace violence; either they knew of someone who suffered under this type of violence or they had experienced it themselves at one time or another. Some say it is an on-going phenomenon depending on the place of assignment. It is prevalent in many health care institutions but often rarely discussed openly among nurses. It is defined by the American Nurses Association (ANA) as threatening behavior, verbal abuse, and physical assault (ANA, 2014). It includes sexual harassment, aggressive behavior both overt and covert that encompasses bullying and other forms of undesirable and unwanted behaviors. There is no federal standard or law that requires protection against violence in the workplace.

However, some states have considered the adoption of legislation that imposes penalties on perpetrators of workplace violence against a nurse or any health care personnel. Additionally, there is now a growing movement to have employers of nurses to implement mandatory forms of a comprehensive prevention program to protect the nursing practitioners exposed to the violence. Some hospitals and other institutions voluntarily imposed on themselves the posting of a notice or warning about possible violent behaviors, implementing acceptable standards of behavior, and promoting a healthful, conducive, and safe environment in their respective workplaces.

A recent study in South Korea about this issue showed how patients were the foremost perpetrators of workplace violence, followed in second place by physicians, and in third place, by the families of patients (Park, Cho, & Hong, 2014). The said study further indicated that verbal abuse was the most prevalent form of violence (64%) and followed by threats of violence (42%), then physical violence (22%), sexual harassment (20%), and bullying (10%).

Lateral violence is defined as the constant degrading of a nurse by peers (Jennydacat, 2010). There are three forms of lateral violence that are composed of the following undesirable kinds of behavior: harassment, discrimination, and bullying (Pontus, 2011). Harassment has many types of negative behavior to include sexual harassment, racial harassment, and stalking. My co-workers are equally aware of lateral violence but they may not be able to define it well.

The nursing facility I am connected with has clear reporting procedures for any cases or instances of workplace violence and that is to report directly to the personnel department. This is because most workplace violence emanates from nursing supervisors and line managers who are under some work pressures and thereby not the right persons to report such instances of violence.  The idea is to bypass these people causing the violence and instead to file a written report of the incident to the personnel department copy furnished to the managing director of the facility.

Possible repercussions of individuals who report workplace violence could include the usual retaliatory tactics such as adverse scheduling (assigned to graveyard shifts), increasing the workload assignments of the nurse, transfer to busier or harder nursing units, disallowing a nurse from availing of paid leaves, or withdrawing optional personnel benefits due to the nurse.

The facility offers a mental health support program for bullied nurses but this seems to be not enough because some nurses have higher rates of absenteeism, low morale, or commit simple clinical errors, or just simply quit their jobs. The support program must be supplemented by a strong network of family, friends, and co-workers for a nurse to ably withstand the onslaughts of workplace violence especially if it is done daily. Sometimes the action is taken for the incident as reported by the nurse-victim but more often, nothing substantial or positive is done.

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