Lateral Violence

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Bullying and lateral violence in nursing has become very infamous in the clinical setting. “Lateral violence refers to acts that occur between colleagues, where bullying is described as acts perpetrated by one in a higher level of authority and occur over time. The acts can be covert or overt acts of verbal or non-verbal aggression.” (American Nurses Association, 2015; Dellasega, 2009). The effects of lateral violence in the workplace often have negative outcomes. These outcomes not only adversely impact registered nurses, but also patients, and other health care employees. Lateral violence and bullying disrupts the clinical setting, as well as cause retention on the work quality of staff. It is very unsafe for patients to be cared for in a setting with significant amounts of lateral violence and nurse bullying because nurses feel intimidated which in turn inhibits proper judgment. Conflict in this setting also causes negative effects on the organization being able to retain long-term employees. Notion of Lateral Violence and Bullying Lateral violence and bullying consists of many concepts. Passive aggressive behavior, lack of privacy, eye-rolling in response to questions, rude remarks, offensive demeanor, and failure to respect confidences are many ways in which this negative behavior can occur (Academy of Medical…show more content…
The National Institute for Occupational Safety as well the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has provided a free online course to improve nurses understanding of violence in the clinical setting. It awards 2.6 contact hours. The course informs the nurse on mechanisms as well as comprehensive avoidance of bullying and lateral violence. It also goes into full detail on how to use the strategies presented in the course. It provides ways to respond to workplace violence (Center of Disease Control and Prevention, 2013,

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